Jago, Lucy, The Northern Lights. Knopf. 281 pages plus bibliography and index.$24.00.

This reviewer will admit a bias against science. It can be traced back to asking the child’s question of why the sky is blue. The answer was confusing and worrisome. All I wanted to know was who colored it.

So it’s hard to admit reading a biography of the Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland, (1868-1917) and enjoying it, but I did. For one thing, there is a fascination in reading about someone who did something important but entirely unknown to the reader. Birkeland, a professor at a small university in small, poor Norway, battled the establishment most of his life. He believed the sun caused both the Aurora Borealis and the north African Zodiacal Light and sent constant streams of electrified gas to the earth. This was seen as nonsense by the powerful English Academy of Science. Only in the 1960s was Birkeland’s theory proved correct.

Birkeland himself was certainly odd enough to satisfy the gossip in us all. He came from a largely uneducated family, married a woman several years older than he and promptly neglected her badly in pursuit of his science, wrote charming reviews and letters in several languages, lived on veronal and alcohol much of his life, and had completely dedicated and loyal lifelong friends. He also modernized the teaching of science in Norwegian universities, thereby earning both gratitude and great dislike. He liked to conduct field experiments in the Arctic winter, which led to tragedy in one case.

Jago has a gift for describing the state of turn-of-the-century science in Norway and Europe; the important issues, the in-fighting, and generally slow and zig-zag march towards real progress. In this day of increasingly science-by-committee, it’s great fun to read of the infuriating, quarrelsome, and highly individualistic days of the lone scientist in the lab.

D. L.