This New Scientist article has an interesting list of the books that have inspired some of the world’s most well-known scientists, such as Jane Goodall and Michio Kaku. Click on any scientist in the list and it goes to an explanation of why they found the book they picked so inspirational.

You can even add your story of literary inspiration in the comments.  I think I’d have to say that Carl Sagan’s “Contact” would have to be my pick. I devoured it in high school and was hooked on astronomy from that point on. It may be fiction, but it’s such an interesting portrayal of what might happen if we really did make contact with alien beings. (Sagan’s other, non-fiction, works are equally as fascinating.)

We’ve done some of our own polling of scientists at LiveScience, most notably with our “Greatest Mysteries” series, where we asked a bunch of scientists what they thought the greatest mystery in science was. We got answers from “How did the universe begin?” to “How many species are on Earth?”