Thursday, July 19, 2007

Dangerous trades

At the Scotsman, Linda Summerhayes considers the life of John Scott Haldane, the subject of a new biography by Martin Goodman (got to get that one, I've got a minor Haldane family obsession--J. B. S. Haldane is one of my favorites, and Naomi Mitchison's autobiography was a wonderfully useful source for The Explosionist):

While his eight-year-old daughter looked on in wonder, John Scott Haldane calmly closed the chamber door and pumped a toxic blend of gases into the enclosed space.

His mission was to discover more about the effect of poison gases on the body and his daughter Naomi was given the job to pull him free and revive him should things go too far.

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