Max Perutz and the Secret of Life

Max Perutz and the Secret of Life
Author :
Publisher : CSHL Press
Total Pages : 383
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780879697853
ISBN-13 : 0879697857
Rating : 4/5 (53 Downloads)

Synopsis Max Perutz and the Secret of Life by : Georgina Ferry

Few scientists have thought more deeply about the nature of their calling and its impact on humanity than Max Perutz (1914–2002). Born in Vienna, Jewish by descent, lapsed Catholic by religion, he came to Cambridge in 1936 to join the lab of the legendary Communist thinker J.D. Bernal. There he began to explore the structures of the molecules that hold the secret of life. In 1940, he was interned and deported to Canada as an enemy alien, only to be brought back and set to work on a bizarre top secret war project. In 1947, he founded the small research group in which Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the structure of DNA: under his leadership it grew to become the world–famous Laboratory for Molecular Biology. Max himself explored the protein hemoglobin and his work, which won him a Nobel Prize in 1962, launched a new era of medicine, heralding today's astonishing advances in the genetic basis of disease. Max Perutz's story, wonderfully told by Georgina Ferry, brims with life. It has the zest of an adventure novel and is full of extraordinary characters. Max was demanding, passionate and driven but also humorous, compassionate and loving. Small in stature, he became a fearless mountain climber; drawing on his own experience as a refugee, he argued fearlessly for human rights; he could be ruthless but had a talent for friendship. An articulate and engaging advocate of science, he found new problems to engage his imagination until weeks before he died aged 88. About the author: Georgina Ferry is a former staff editor on New Scientist,and contributor to BBC Radio 4's Science Now.Her books include the acclaimed biography Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life(1998); The Common Thread(2002, with Sir John Sulston); and A Computer Called LEO(2003). She lives in Oxford.

Max Perutz And The Secret Of Life

Max Perutz And The Secret Of Life
Author :
Publisher : Random House
Total Pages : 386
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781446402658
ISBN-13 : 1446402657
Rating : 4/5 (58 Downloads)

Synopsis Max Perutz And The Secret Of Life by : Georgina Ferry

Few scientists have thought more deeply about their calling and its impact on humanity than Max Perutz (1914-2002). Born in Vienna, Jewish by descent, lapsed Catholic by religion, Max came to Cambridge in 1936, to join the lab of the legendary Communist thinker J.D. Bernal. In 1940 he was interned and deported to Canada as an enemy alien, only to be brought back and set to work on a bizarre top secret war project. Seven years later he founded the small research group in which Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the structure of DNA. Max Perutz himself explored the protein haemoglobin and his work, which won him a shared Nobel Prize in 1962, launched a new era of medicine, heralding today's astonishing advances in the genetic basis of disease. Max Perutz's story, wonderfully told by Georgina Ferry, brims with life; it has the zest of an adventure novel and is full of extraordinary characters. Max was demanding, passionate and driven but also humorous, compassionate and loving. Georgina Ferry's absorbing biography is a marvellous tribute to a great scientist.

I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier

I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages : 388
Release :
ISBN-10 : 019859027X
ISBN-13 : 9780198590279
Rating : 4/5 (7X Downloads)

Synopsis I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier by : Max F. Perutz

This collection of essays from Nobel Laureate Max Perutz explores a wide range of scientific and personal topics with insight and lucidity. It includes lively anecdotes about key figures in 20th-century science.

What a Time I Am Having

What a Time I Am Having
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 544
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39015080859799
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (99 Downloads)

Synopsis What a Time I Am Having by : Max F. Perutz

Selected by his daughter Vivien, these letters chronicle Perutz's life through his own vivid, erudite, and humorous pen. With a spontaneity and directness no autobiography can match, this volume captures the hopes, roadblocks, and moments of elation throughout his 60-year quest to understand the molecular biology of hemoglobin.

Francis Crick

Francis Crick
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 592
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39076002862220
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (20 Downloads)

Synopsis Francis Crick by : Robert Cecil Olby

This engrossing biography by one of molecular biology's foremost scholars reveals the remarkable evolution of Francis Crick's scientific career and insights into his personal life, from his early studies in biophysics, to the discovery of the structure of DNA, to his later work in neuroscience and the nature of consciousness.

Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin
Author :
Publisher : Harper Collins
Total Pages : 355
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780062283504
ISBN-13 : 0062283502
Rating : 4/5 (04 Downloads)

Synopsis Rosalind Franklin by : Brenda Maddox

In 1962, Maurice Wilkins, Francis Crick, and James Watson received the Nobel Prize, but it was Rosalind Franklin's data and photographs of DNA that led to their discovery. Brenda Maddox tells a powerful story of a remarkably single-minded, forthright, and tempestuous young woman who, at the age of fifteen, decided she was going to be a scientist, but who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century.

Dance to the Tune of Life

Dance to the Tune of Life
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 315
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781107176249
ISBN-13 : 1107176247
Rating : 4/5 (49 Downloads)

Synopsis Dance to the Tune of Life by : Denis Noble

This book formulates a relativistic theory of biology, challenging the common gene-centred view of organisms.

Karl Popper and the Two New Secrets of Life

Karl Popper and the Two New Secrets of Life
Author :
Publisher : Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages : 170
Release :
ISBN-10 : 3161532074
ISBN-13 : 9783161532078
Rating : 4/5 (74 Downloads)

Synopsis Karl Popper and the Two New Secrets of Life by : Hans-Joachim Niemann

The story of how humans and all living things came into existence is told in two widely believed versions: the Book of Genesis and Darwin's Origin of Species . It was the philosopher Karl Popper who presented us with a third story, no less important. His New Interpretation of Darwinism denies the creative power of blind chance and natural selection and establishes knowledge and activity of all living beings as the real driving forces of evolution. Thus, spiritual elements are back in the theory of evolution, and in Popper's view "the entire evolution is an adventure of the mind." In this book, Hans-Joachim Niemann establishes Karl Popper as an eminent philosopher of biology. In the first chapter, biographical details are unearthed concerning how Popper's biological interests were inspired by a biological meeting in the old windmill at Hunstanton in 1936. The second chapter focusses on the year 1986 when Popper, in several lectures, summarized the results of his life-long biological thinking. The most important of these, the Medawar Lecture given at the Royal Society London, was lost for a long time and is now printed in the Appendix. A new world view begins to emerge that is completely different from Creationism or Darwinism. Twenty years after Popper's death, the last chapter looks back on his biological thoughts in the light of new results of molecular biology. His attack at that time on long-lasting dogmas of evolutionary theory turned out to be largely justified. The new biology seems even well suited to support Popper's endeavour to overcome the gloomy aspects of Darwinism that have made organisms passive parts of a machinery of deadly competition. Neither blind chance nor natural selection are the creative forces of all life, but rather knowledge and activity. How they came into existence is still a secret and a worthwhile research programme.--

The Eighth Day of Creation

The Eighth Day of Creation
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 714
Release :
ISBN-10 : 8796947853
ISBN-13 : 9788796947853
Rating : 4/5 (53 Downloads)

Synopsis The Eighth Day of Creation by : Horace Freeland Judson

Genius in the Shadows

Genius in the Shadows
Author :
Publisher : Skyhorse
Total Pages : 691
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781628734775
ISBN-13 : 1628734779
Rating : 4/5 (75 Downloads)

Synopsis Genius in the Shadows by : William Lanouette

Well-known names such as Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Edward Teller are usually those that surround the creation of the atom bomb. One name that is rarely mentioned is Leo Szilard, known in scientific circles as “father of the atom bomb.” The man who first developed the idea of harnessing energy from nuclear chain reactions, he is curiously buried with barely a trace in the history of this well-known and controversial topic. Born in Hungary and educated in Berlin, he escaped Hitler’s Germany in 1933 and that first year developed his concept of nuclear chain reactions. In order to prevent Nazi scientists from stealing his ideas, he kept his theories secret, until he and Albert Einstein pressed the US government to research atomic reactions and designed the first nuclear reactor. Though he started his career out lobbying for civilian control of atomic energy, he concluded it with founding, in 1962, the first political action committee for arms control, the Council for a Livable World. Besides his career in atomic energy, he also studied biology and sparked ideas that won others the Nobel Prize. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, where Szilard spent his final days, was developed from his concepts to blend science and social issues.