Passionate Minds The Inner World of Scientists

by Wolpert, Lewis; Richards, Alison

• ISBN13: 9780198549048
• ISBN10: 0198549040
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-04-23
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

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

1 Passionate Minds	1	(8)
ALISON RICHARDS
IN TWO MINDS	9	(62)
2 Blemished heroes	9	(10)
CARL DJERASSI chemist
3 Tapeworm quadrilles	19	(8)
ROALD HOFFMANN theoretical chemist
4 Worlds apart	27	(10)
JARED DIAMOND physiologist and evolutionary biologist
5 Scaling the heights	37	(10)
LEROY HOOD biotechnologist
6 Clinical science	47	(12)
DAVID WEATHERALL clinician and molecular biologist
7 Swimming with the tide	59	(12)
JAMES LIGHTHILL applied mathematician
AGAINST THE GRAIN	71	(52)
8 Freeing the mind	71	(12)
JAMES LOVELOCK chemist
9 Gardens of the mind	83	(10)
PETER MITCHELL biochemist
10 Not a company man	93	(10)
JOHN CAIRNS molecular biologist
11 Not all in the genes	103	(10)
RICHARD LEWONTIN evolutionary biologist
12 In agreement with nature	113	(10)
ANTONIO GARCIA BELLIDO developmental biologist
EUREKA	123	(64)
13 Daydreaming molecules	123	(8)
JAMES BLACK pharmacologist
14 Going into the dark	131	(10)
GERALD EDELMAN immunologist and neurobiologist
15 Hole in one	141	(8)
MICHAEL BERRIDGE cell biologist
16 Ways of seeing	149	(10)
ELWYN SIMONS palaeontologist
17 Three quarks for muster mark	159	(8)
MURRAY GELL-MANN theoretical physicist
18 The weirdest of fancies	167	(10)
SHELDON GLASHOW theoretical physicist
19 Directly to the heart	177	(10)
NICOLE LE DOUARIN developmental biologist
REFLECTIONS	187	(50)
20 Other minds	187	(8)
GERALD HOLTON physicist and historian
21 Asking nature	195	(10)
CARLO RUBBIA particle physicist
22 A very tidy desk	205	(10)
DAVID PILBEAM physical anthropologist
23 Of mice and mothers	215	(12)
ANNE MCLAREN mammalian developmental biologist
24 A family affair	227	(10)
AVRION MITCHISON immunologist
Index	237