# Famous in STEM

> Famous in STEM is a series of seven nonfiction books by Javier Sanz: short, true biographies of the people behind science, technology, engineering and math, written for readers 13 and up. 161 people in 158 chapters. Every volume stands on its own. Sold on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.

Key facts:
- Author: Javier Sanz (Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0BHN7K527)
- Series page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBN56CKM
- Audience: readers 13 and up (teens, curious adults, students, teachers, homeschool families)
- Format of each chapter: a fact box (dates and the big idea), a true opening scene, one scientific idea explained in plain language, and usually a "Try this", "Look around you" or "Think about it" box
- Editions: 2026 editions, rewritten and fact-checked chapter by chapter; the books can be read in any order

## The seven books

- [Famous in STEM, Vol. 1: The Greatest Physicists](https://famousinstem.com/books/the-greatest-physicists/): 26 minds who cracked the laws of the universe. Gravity, electricity, radioactivity, relativity and black holes, told through the people who figured them out. People: Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Daniel Bernoulli, Galileo Galilei, Michael Faraday, Max Planck, Stephen Hawking, Niels Bohr, James Clerk Maxwell, Ole Rømer, Ernest Rutherford, Richard Feynman, Alessandro Volta, Benjamin Franklin, Archimedes, Heinrich Hertz, Johannes Kepler, Georg Ohm, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, James Chadwick, Henri Becquerel, J. J. Thomson, Thomas Edison. Paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SJ2S22; Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBNG3L48
- [Famous in STEM, Vol. 2: Mathematical Masterminds](https://famousinstem.com/books/mathematical-masterminds/): 23 minds who found the patterns behind everything. Code-breaking, infinity, prime numbers and flight paths to orbit, told through the people who found the patterns. People: Carl Friedrich Gauss, Blaise Pascal, Alan Turing, Leonhard Euler, Paul Erdős, Eratosthenes, Pythagoras, Fibonacci, Euclid, Girolamo Cardano, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Bernhard Riemann, Pierre de Fermat, Katherine Johnson, Henri Poincaré, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ada Lovelace, Terence Tao, John Nash, Georg Cantor, John von Neumann, Joseph-Louis Lagrange. Paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDJZ8X8Z; Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDM6LPYX
- [Famous in STEM, Vol. 3: Tech Titans of Silicon Valley](https://famousinstem.com/books/tech-titans-of-silicon-valley/): The rebels and coders who built the digital world. The chip, the internet, the web and the companies built on them, told through the rebels and coders who made them. People: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Mitnick, Linus Torvalds, Tim Berners-Lee, Grace Hopper, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, Edsger Dijkstra, Jack Dorsey, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, Shawn Fanning, James Gosling, Guido van Rossum, Michael Dell, Richard Stallman, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Jimmy Wales, Larry Ellison. Paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVTVKYX7; Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW1KC8FD
- [Famous in STEM, Vol. 4: Explosive Chemists](https://famousinstem.com/books/explosive-chemists/): 24 daring minds who changed what the world is made of. Dynamite, the periodic table, DNA, plastics and Kevlar, told through the chemists who made them. People: Alfred Nobel, Antoine Lavoisier, Dmitri Mendeleev, Robert Boyle, Adolf von Baeyer, Fritz Haber, Rosalind Franklin, Mario Molina, Alice Ball, Linus Pauling, Dorothy Hodgkin, Percy Julian, Humphry Davy, August Kekulé, Louis Pasteur, Gertrude Elion, Svante Arrhenius, Leo Baekeland, Carl Scheele, Amedeo Avogadro, Tu Youyou, Stephanie Kwolek, Henry Cavendish, Ahmed Zewail. Paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQTGPBCP; Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GR4DSSXP
- [Famous in STEM, Vol. 5: Brilliant Biologists](https://famousinstem.com/books/brilliant-biologists/): 21 explorers who revealed how life works. Evolution, genes, chimpanzees, ants and the double helix, told through the explorers who revealed how life works. People: Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, Carl Linnaeus, Barbara McClintock, Alexander von Humboldt, Alfred Russel Wallace, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, E. O. Wilson, Dian Fossey, George Washington Carver, Lynn Margulis, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Wangari Maathai, David Attenborough, Robert Hooke, Mary Anning, James Watson and Francis Crick, Charles Henry Turner. Paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQZNZJTY; Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GR3PP5VQ
- [Famous in STEM, Vol. 6: Medical Pioneers](https://famousinstem.com/books/medical-pioneers/): 20 healers who beat disease and saved millions. Vaccines, antibiotics, hand-washing, blood banks and heart surgery, told through the healers who fought for them. People: Alexander Fleming, Edward Jenner, Florence Nightingale, Jonas Salk, Hippocrates, Elizabeth Blackwell, Joseph Lister, Virginia Apgar, William Harvey, Andreas Vesalius, Daniel Hale Williams, Christiaan Barnard, Ignaz Semmelweis, Charles Drew, Helen Taussig, Rebecca Lee Crumpler, Harvey Cushing, Paul Ehrlich, Galen, Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GR4NCBD7
- [Famous in STEM, Vol. 7: Extraordinary Engineers](https://famousinstem.com/books/extraordinary-engineers/): 20 builders who engineered the modern world. Bridges, towers, tunnels, railways, rockets and the bit, told through the builders who engineered the modern world. People: Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Gustave Eiffel, James Watt, Fazlur Rahman Khan, Emily Warren Roebling, Wernher von Braun, George Stephenson, Lillian Gilbreth, Sergei Korolev, John Smeaton, Hertha Ayrton, Claude Shannon, Norbert Rillieux, Henry Ford, Marc Isambard Brunel, Granville Woods, Ellen Swallow Richards, Rudolf Diesel, Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, Lee de Forest. Paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GR5HN2R4

## Pages

- [All 161 people, with dates and big ideas](https://famousinstem.com/people/): searchable index of everyone in the series
- [Compare the seven books](https://famousinstem.com/books/)
- [Gift guide](https://famousinstem.com/gift-guide/): which book suits which interest
- [For teachers and homeschool](https://famousinstem.com/for-teachers/): biography projects, activities, discussion questions
- [About the series and author](https://famousinstem.com/about/)

## Frequently asked

- What is Famous in STEM? A series of seven nonfiction books by Javier Sanz. Each book tells the true stories of 20 to 27 people from one field (physics, mathematics, computing, chemistry, biology, medicine or engineering) in short chapters that explain the science in plain language. 158 chapters and 161 people in all.
- What age is it for? Readers 13 and up: teens, curious adults and anyone who prefers stories to textbooks. Confident younger readers who love science can read them too: the chapters are short and explain every idea from scratch.
- Do the books have to be read in order? No. Every volume stands on its own, and so does every chapter. Start with the field your reader loves most.
- What is inside each chapter? A short biography of one person (a few chapters cover two people who worked together), opening with a true scene from their life. Each starts with a fact box (born, died and the big idea in one or two sentences), explains one real piece of science, and most include a "Try this", "Look around you" or "Think about it" box. Many chapters have an illustration of the science.
- Are the books accurate? The 2026 editions were rewritten chapter by chapter and fact-checked against published sources. Where an anecdote rests on a single account, the books say so ("the story goes") rather than presenting legend as fact.
- Can they be used for school biography projects? Yes. Each chapter gives a student a person, dates, the key idea and a story to build on, in a few pages, which makes the series a good starting point for choosing a scientist and planning a report.
- Where can I buy them? On Amazon, in paperback and Kindle editions (hardcover editions are listed on Amazon where available). Each book page on this site links straight to its Amazon listing.

## Optional

- [Full plain-text version of this site's book information](https://famousinstem.com/llms-full.txt)
- [Machine-readable catalog (JSON)](https://famousinstem.com/books.json)