A well-written addition to the publisher’s “Eminent Lives” series.
Short biography of a giant in molecular biology.
English science writer Ridley (Nature Via Nurture, 2003, etc.) posits that Francis Crick (1916–2004) was one of the greats, on par with Einstein, Darwin and Galileo. That claim may surprise those familiar with him primarily as James Watson’s coauthor on the famous paper describing DNA’s double helix. But the author, who knew Crick, argues that his work to establish the precise correspondence between specific DNA bases and the proteins they encode is a discovery as crucial as gravity or evolution. Ridley traces Crick’s origins from a middle-class family of modest means. (His grandfather, an amateur naturalist, once exchanged letters with Darwin.) Trained as a physicist, Crick worked on defense projects involving mines and torpedoes during WWII and came out of the war with no clear direction. He decided to try biology, with a quixotic notion of finding the key to life. Landing a slot at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory, he quickly established himself as a nonstop talker with an annoying laugh. Though a good theorist, he had problems with authority figures and was expected to leave once he finished his doctorate. Then Watson came to Cambridge; their joint assault on the structure of DNA is one of the best-known stories in modern science. Ridley covers the key details with keen insights into the pair’s relationship, then moves on to Crick’s role in solving the triplet code embedded in the DNA molecule. Nor does the text neglect his later work in both molecular biology and in attempting to solve the problem of consciousness. Crick comes across as a likable, highly motivated man without undue foibles; portraits of his coworkers and the period are also sharply drawn.
A well-written addition to the publisher’s “Eminent Lives” series.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-082333-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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