Sensational Science: A Century of Microbe Hunters

Explore the nearly 100-year-old book that influenced generations of scientists.

On view through April 2025
Building Façade

The covers and dust jackets from the book Microbe Hunters featured in our new outdoor exhibition span nearly 100 years and tell stories of their own.

Bacteriologist and popular science writer Paul de Kruif penned Microbe Hunters in 1926. It was an immediate literary and scientific hit. The book, which is written in a vibrant and engaging tone, profiles 13 scientists, has been translated into 18 languages, and has never gone out of print. First published at a time when science was a lot less diverse than it is today, Microbe Hunters attracted many individuals in the Science History Institute’s collections to careers in research.

The different covers reflect the ways publishers thought about their audiences and how these thoughts changed over time. What was likely to captivate the reader’s imagination? Death? Technological innovation? The teeming invisible world?

Closely reading Microbe Hunters and its variations through time can teach us about the history of science. But it can also help us think about how we tell that history.

Curators: Judith Kaplan and Gabriela Zoller
Installation and digitization: Jahna Auerbach and Scott Bowe