Synopses & Reviews
In this endlessly engaging volume, biologist Lewis Wolpert lets readers sit in as he talks with 23 of the world's leading scientists. What is day-to-day life like for a scientist? How have they hit upon their most important discoveries? What is the nature of scientific creativity?
Here, in this stimulating series of conversations, such eminent scientists as Murray Gell-Man, Jared Diamond, Gerald Edelman, Richard Lewontin, Roald Hoffman, and Carlo Rubbia talk candidly about their backgrounds, their careers, the people who have influenced or inspired them, and their most significant findings. We learn, for instance, how being an outsider or an "innocent" can play an invaluable role in overcoming conventional barriers to a new understanding. Indeed, even being a little crazy seems to help. As Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow says, "if you would simply take all the kookiest ideas of the early 1970s and put them together, you would have made for yourself the theory which is, in fact, the correct theory of nature."
These conversations brim with insights into the minds of some of the great men and women of modern science. They offer as well an illuminating glimpse into the nature of scientific discovery.
About the Author
Lewis Wolpert is Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine at University College, London.
Alison Richards is a producer of science programs for BBC Radio. They both live in London.
Table of Contents
Introduction: More Passion for Science
Section I: In Two Minds
Blemished heroes, Carl Djerassi
Tapeworm quadrilles, Roald Hoffman
Worlds apart, Jared Diamond
Scaling the heights, Leroy Hood
Clinical science, David Weatherall
Swimming with the tide, James Lighthill
Section II: Against the Grain
Freeing the mind, James Lovelock
Gardens of the mind, Peter Mitchell
Not a company man, John Cairns
Not all in the genes, Richard Lewontin
In agreement with nature, Antonio Garcia-Bellido
Section III: Eureka
Daydreaming molecules, James Black
Going into the dark, Gerald Edelman
Hole in one, Michael Berridge
Ways of seeing, Elwyn Simon
Three quarks for muster mark, Murray Gell-Man
The wierdest of fancies, Sheldon Glashow
Directly to the heart, Nicole le Douarin
Section IV: Reflections
Other minds, Gerald Holton
Asking nature, Carlo Rubbia
A very tidy desk, David Pilbeam
Of mice and mothers, Anne McLaren
A family affair, Avrion Mitchison
Index