Generations of practical and ingenious Maritimers have given the word great things. Since the mid-nineteenth century, scientists have fanned out into the world from colleges and universities that are among the oldest in North America.

Great Maritime Achievers in Science and Technology brings together the achievements of more than 30 of these trail-blazing scientists and inventors, many of whom gained national and international prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth.

Among those profiled in the book are Grace Annie Lockhart, the first woman in the British Empire to earn a university science degree; Charles Fenerty, who discovered how to make paper out of wood; Abraham Gesner, who invented kerosene and fathered the petroleum industry; and others whose practical, yet creative minds helped change the course of Canada's scientific history.