Burrell, Brian

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BURRELL, Brian

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Home—Northampton, MA. Office—University of Massachusetts, Department of Mathematics and Science, Lederle Graduate Research Tower, Box 34515, Amherst, MA 01003-9305. E-mail—burrell@math.umass.edu.

CAREER: University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, professor of mathematics.

WRITINGS:

Merriam-Webster's Pocket Guide to Business and Everyday Math, Merriam-Webster (Springfield, MA), 1996.

The Words We Live By: The Creeds, Mottoes, and Pledges That Have Shaped America, Free Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Merriam-Webster's Guide to Everyday Math: A Home and Business Reference, Merriam-Webster (Springfield, MA), 1998.

Damn the Torpedoes!: Fighting Words, Rallying Cries, and the Hidden History of Warfare, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1999.

Postcards from the Brain Museum: The Improbable Search for Meaning in the Matter of Famous Minds, Broadway Books (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Brian Burrell, a professor of mathematics at the University of Massachusetts, is the author of critically acclaimed nonfiction works, including The Words We Live By: The Creeds, Mottoes, and Pledges That Have Shaped America and Postcards from the Brain Museum: The Improbable Search for Meaning in the Matter of Famous Minds. In The Words We Live By Burrell examines the origin and importance of well-known phrases, slogans, inscriptions, maxims, vows, and other sayings recorded in the English language, including the Golden Rule, the Hippocratic Oath, Murphy's Law, and the Pledge of Allegiance. In the second half of the book, the author presents full versions of significant texts, including those covered in his narrative. "Burrell serves up a bewitching brew of history, humor, anecdote, and good sense" in The Words We Live By, observed Library Journal contributor David B. Mattern.

Postcards from the Brain Museum is "a broad and revealing study of a little-known and often unflattering chapter of science," according to a critic in Kirkus Reviews. In the work, Burrell explores the efforts of the scientific community in Europe and America to locate the sources of both genius and evil by examining the anatomy of the human brain. The idea that the physical structure of the brain is directly linked to cognitive ability originated with phrenology, a pseudo-science that analyzed the shape of the skull to determine a person's mental capacities. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, scientists formed societies that collected, removed, dissected, and studied the brains of both eminent thinkers and violent criminals in an attempt to discover the structural differences influencing an individual's behavior and abilities. Some of history's most influential figures were involved in the research: the brain of celebrated physicist Albert Einstein was saved for examination, and the KGB assigned a guard to protect the dissected brain of Soviet chairman Vladimir Lenin. According to a Kirkus Reviews critic, "Walt Whitman's brain was accidentally destroyed before it could be examined, and others got only perfunctory analysis."

Ultimately, such work was of little scientific value, Burrell points out in Postcards from the Brain Museum. Burrell suggests, however, that modern neuroscience is concerned with similar findings, such as the idea that the brain might hold markers indicating physical and mental characteristics. "His history is therefore less a chronicle of quackery than a sympathetic account of scientific innovators whose ideas didn't quite pan out," noted a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. "While never stooping to mockery," wrote Gilbert Taylor in Booklist, the author "yet entertains as he conveys a sense of what these nineteenth-century anatomists thought they were accomplishing." In Entertainment Weekly, Wook Kim called Postcards from the Brain Museum "a thoughtful glimpse at a mostly hidden realm," and Library Journal contributor Laurie Bartolini stated that Burrell "has written an engaging account of the search for an anatomy of genius."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2004, Gilbert Taylor, review of Postcards from the Brain Museum: The Improbable Search for Meaning in the Matter of Famous Minds, p. 692.

Entertainment Weekly, January 21, 2005, Wook Kim, review of Postcards from the Brain Museum, p. 94.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2004, review of Postcards from the Brain Museum, p. 991.

Library Journal, July, 1997, David B. Mattern, review of The Words We Live By: The Creeds, Mottoes, and Pledges That Have Shaped America, p. 105; October 15, 2004, Laurie Bartolini, review of Postcards from the Brain Museum, p. 84.

Publishers Weekly, October 18, 2004, review of Postcards from the Brain Museum, p. 54.