Mirror mirror

I am in reflective mood. The combination of my recent promotion, my annual staff development review and the relative quiet of the university summer vacation have conspired to promote thoughts about questions such as "What kind of professor am I?","What legacy will I leave?", "What do I aim for now?" .

I would say that I am generally on the more reflective side of the population anyway, but some specific circumstances make significant personal development necessary now.
My department has a somewhat unusual demographic. As well as several what you might call "old school" professorial staff, we have a rapidly growing number of professors (myself included) who have been promoted in the past few years and were under the age of 40 at the time of promotion. This means that instead of the traditional view of promotion to Professor being something obtained at the end of a long and distinguished career, we have 25+ years of "Professor-hood" to maintain and manage. In addition to this, the role of Head of Department rotates through eligible staff every few years, so it is more than likely that we will each take at least one or more turns before we retire. In addition, much of the activity I have undertaken until recently has been targetted at not only advancing scientific understanding in my field, but also at building my CV to get to this point. Whilst there are "zones" for professors with different skills and experiences, and therefore some career progression goals laid out, these are opaque and in some circumstances virtually impossible to plan for (e.g. making it to zone 3 is only possible if you are made a Fellow of the Royal Society).

To assist with answering these questions I am embarking on "project me", which will define (or rather re-examine) my core values and activities in my new role. My line manager (who thankfully is on the same wavelength) suggested reading biographies of a wide range of scientists and academics and identifying desirable traits and potential role models from amongst their ranks, as well as looking at my peers with "role model" glasses on. I am still slightly uncomfortable with looking at "real live" people in this way so intend to start with the biographies. I am re-reading Georgina Ferry's biography of Dorothy Hodgkin which I first read many years ago. This will be followed by Brenda Maddox's biography of Rosalind Franklin, and biographies of Ada Lovelace and Rosalyn Yallow. I am also interested in the new biography of Mary Somerville. However, I fear this concentration on female scientists is too exclusive - there is absolutely no reason why the traits that I might discover that I value should only be found in women. So this is an appeal for suggestions of biographies of male scientists - preferably those more interested in collaborative work than sole endeavour. I'd love to hear of any that you have found useful.