2: Scientist memoir biographiesfiction mainly medicine related
Explore captivating scientist memoir biographies and fiction books focused on medicine. Discover inspiring stories of medical pioneers and breakthroughs in this curated collection of medicine-related memoirs.
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Microbe Hunters
by Paul De Kruif
Presents twelve stories of the men who pioneered the study of bacteriology.
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Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie (Great Discoveries)
by Barbara Goldsmith
Through family interviews, diaries, letters, and workbooks that had been sealed for over sixty years, Barbara Goldsmith reveals the Marie Curie behind the mythâan all-too-human woman struggling to balance a spectacular scientific career, a demanding family, the prejudice of society, and her own passionate nature. Obsessive Genius is a dazzling portrait of Curie, her amazing scientific success, and the price she paid for fame. The best-selling, "excellent . . . poignantâand scientifically lucidâ portrait" (New York Times Book Review) of the remarkable Marie Curie.... "Never a dull moment. . . . Goldsmith leads the reader through a wonderland of facts with just the right blend of science and story. In the end, the mystery of the great Madame [Curie] remains, but a deeper understanding of what she went through as a woman and a scientist shines as strong as her radium."âSan Francisco Chronicle "Bestselling historian Goldsmith incisively chronicles [Curie's] intensely dramatic life. . . . Her powerful portrait reveals a woman of great passion, genius, and pain who changed the world."âBooklist, starred review
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A Feeling for the Organism, 10th Aniversary Edition
by Evelyn Fox Keller
For much of her life she worked alone, brilliant but eccentric, with ideas that made little sense to her colleagues. Yet before DNA and the molecular revolution, Barbara McClintock's tireless analysis of corn led her to uncover some of the deepest, most intricate secrets of genetic organization. Nearly forty years later, her insights would bring her a MacArthur Foundation grant, the Nobel Prize, and long overdue recognition. At her recent death at age 90, she was widely acknowledged as one of the most significant figures in 20th-century science. Evelyn Fox Keller's acclaimed biography, A Feeling for the Organism, gives us the full story of McClintock's pioneeringâalthough sometimes professionally difficultâcareer in cytology and genetics. The book now appears in a special edition marking the 10th anniversary of its original publication.
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Into the Past
by Phillip V. Tobias
Phillip Tobias is best known for his pioneering work at South Africa's famous fossil hominid sites, such as Sterkfontein, and for his quarter-century partnership with Louis and Mary Leakey, studying their fossils from Tanzania and Kenya--Inside front cover.
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Memoir of a Thinking Radish
by Peter Brian Medawar
This fascinating volume presents the memoirs and reflections of Peter Medawar--the Nobel Prize-winning scientist and highly acclaimed author of Pluto's Republic, Aristotle to Zoos, and The Limits of Science. The image of man as a cross between Pascal's "thinking reed" and Falstaff's "forked radish," that Medawar invokes with the title to his autobiography, stems from his humble desire "not to claim for myself as an author any distinction more extravagant than membership of the human race." Yet in this incisive and witty memoir, Medawar reveals the events of an exceptional life, depicting his early days in Rio de Janeiro, his education at Oxford in the 1930s, the rewards and frustrations of his medical career, his musical education, his illnesses and recovery, his travels, and much more. This highly personal account illuminates the life of one of the most engaging and impressive men of our time.
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The Excitement and Fascination of Science
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Vol. 2, with subtitle Reflections by eminent scientists, compiled by W. C. Gibson.
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Hans Krebs
by Frederic Lawrence Holmes
Reconstructs the investigative pathway and the life of Hans Krebs, from the time of his arrival in England in 1933 until 1937, when he made the discovery for which he is best known--the formulation of the citric acid cycle.
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Hans Krebs: The formation of a scientific life, 1900-1933
by Frederic Lawrence Holmes
The biography of one of the world's foremost biochemists, which traces his scientific career and his discoveries of the urea cycle and the citric acid cycle. The text makes use of five years of interviews with Hans Krebs, and a complete set of Krebs' key laboratory notebooks.
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Meselson, Stahl, and the Replication of DNA
by Frederic Lawrence Holmes
In 1957 two young scientists produced an experiment confirming that DNA replicates as predicted by the double helix structure Watson and Cricks had proposed.
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Nature's Robots
by Charles Tanford
The authorĂs strike out in search of proteins, those molecular workhorses who labor at the heart of every living process, helping readers unravel the secret of one of natureĂs most fascinating and essential processes.
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George Beadle, an Uncommon Farmer
by Paul Berg
"The authors explore Beadle's life and scientific accomplishments against the backdrop of classical genetics, and discuss the development of the new genetics as well as his interactions with the majot players in these fields - Barbara mcClintock, Boris Ephrussi, T.H. Morgan Linus Pauling, James Watson, and Max DelbrĂŒck among them." -- book jacket.
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Investigative Pathways
by Frederic Lawrence Holmes
This fascinating book is an investigation of scientific creativity. Following the research pathways of outstanding scientists over the past three centuries, it finds common features in their careers and their landmark discoveries and sheds light on the nature of long-term experimental research. Frederic Lawrence Holmes begins by discussing various approaches to the historical study of scientific practice. He then explains three kinds of analysis of the individual scientific life: broad-scale, which examines the phases of a scientist's career - apprenticeship, mastery, distinction, and maturity - over a lifetime; middle-scale, which explores the episodes within such a career; and fine-scale, which scrutinises laboratory notebooks and other data to focus on the daily interplay between thought and operation. Using these analyses, Holmes presents rich examples from his studies of six preeminent scientists: Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, Claude Bernard, Hans Krebs, Matthew Meselson, Franklin Stahl, and Seymour Benzer. The similar themes that he finds in their work and careers lead him to valuable insights into enduring issues and problems in understanding the scientific process.
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Time, Love, Memory
by Jonathan Weiner
The story of Nobel Prizeâwinning discoveries regarding the molecular mechanisms controlling the bodyâs circadian rhythm. How much of our fate is decided before we are born? Which of our characteristics is inscribed in our DNA? Weiner brings us into Benzer's Fly Rooms at the California Institute of Technology, where Benzer, and his asssociates are in the process of finding answers, often astonishing ones, to these questions. Part biography, part thrilling scientific detective story, Time, Love, Memory forcefully demonstrates how Benzer's studies are changing our world view--and even our lives. Jonathan Weiner, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Beak of the Finch, brings his brilliant reporting skills to the story of Seymour Benzer, the Brooklyn-born maverick scientist whose study of genetics and experiments with fruit fly genes has helped revolutionize or knowledge of the connections between DNA and behavior both animal and human.
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Reconceiving the Gene
by Frederic Lawrence Holmes
This book relates how, between 1954 and 1961, the biologist Seymour Benzer mapped the fine structure of the rII region of the genome of the bacterial virus known as phage T4. Benzerâs accomplishments are widely recognized as a tipping point in mid-twentieth-century molecular biology when the nature of the gene was recast in molecular terms. More often than any other individual, he is considered to have led geneticists from the classical gene into the molecular age. Drawing on Benzerâs remarkably complete record of his experiments, his correspondence, and published sources, this book reconstructs how the former physicist initiated his work in phage biology and achieved his landmark investigation. The account of Benzerâs creativity as a researcher is a fascinating story that also reveals intriguing aspects common to the scientific enterprise.
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The Electric Life of Michael Faraday
by Alan Hirshfeld
Tells the story of Michael Faraday, who was a poor, uneducated bookbinder's apprentice who overcame adversity and class prejudice in nineteenth-century England to emerge as the greatest experimental scientist of his day.
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True Genius
by Vicki Daitch
What is genius? Define it. Now think of scientists who embody the concept of genius. Does the name John Bardeen spring to mind? Indeed, have you ever heard of him? Like so much in modern life, immediate name recognition often rests on a cult of personality. We know Einstein, for example, not just for his tremendous contributions to science, but also because he was a character, who loved to mug for the camera. And our continuing fascination with Richard Feynman is not exclusively based on his body of work; it is in large measure tied to his flamboyant nature and offbeat sense of humor. These men, and their outsize personalities, have come to erroneously symbolize the true nature of genius and creativity. We picture them born brilliant, instantly larger than life. But is that an accurate picture of genius? What of others who are equal in stature to these icons of science, but whom history has awarded only a nod because they did not readily engage the public? Could a person qualify as a bona fide genius if he was a regular Joe? The answer may rest in the story of John Bardeen. John Bardeen was the first person to have been awarded two Nobel Prizes in the same field. He shared one with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the transistor. But it was the charismatic Shockley who garnered all the attention, primarily for his Hollywood ways and notorious views on race and intelligence. Bardeen's second Nobel Prize was awarded for the development of a theory of superconductivity, a feat that had eluded the best efforts of leading theorists-including Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Richard Feynman. Arguably, Bardeen's work changed the world in more ways than that of any other scientific genius of his time. Yet while every school child knows of Einstein, few people have heard of John Bardeen. Why is this the case? Perhaps because Bardeen differs radically from the popular stereotype of genius. He was a modest, mumbling Midwesterner, an ordinary person who worked hard and had a knack for physics and mathematics. He liked to picnic with his family, collaborate quietly with colleagues, or play a round of golf. None of that was newsworthy, so the media, and consequently the public, ignored him. John Bardeen simply fits a new profile of genius. Through an exploration of his science as well as his life, a fresh and thoroughly engaging portrait of genius and the nature of creativity emerges. This perspective will have readers looking anew at what it truly means to be a genius.
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Fermat's Enigma
by Simon Singh
xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ...no solution "I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple; proving it, however, became the Holy Grail of mathematics, baffling its finest minds for more than 350 years. In Fermat's Enigma--based on the author's award-winning documentary film, which aired on PBS's "Nova"--Simon Singh tells the astonishingly entertaining story of the pursuit of that grail, and the lives that were devoted to, sacrificed for, and saved by it. Here is a mesmerizing tale of heartbreak and mastery that will forever change your feelings about mathematics.
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Genius
by James Gleick
To his colleagues, Richard Feynman was not so much a genius as he was a full-blown magician: someone who âdoes things that nobody else could do and that seem completely unexpected.â The path he cleared for twentieth-century physics led from the making of the atomic bomb to a Nobel Prize-winning theory of quantam electrodynamics to his devastating exposĂ© of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. At the same time, the ebullient Feynman established a reputation as an eccentric showman, a master safe cracker and bongo player, and a wizard of seduction. Now James Gleick, author of the bestselling Chaos, unravels teh dense skein of Feynmanâs thought as well as the paradoxes of his character in a biographyâwhich was nominated for a National Book Awardâof outstanding lucidity and compassion.
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Capillarity and Wetting Phenomena
by Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
The study of capillarity is in the midst of a veritable explosion. What is offered here is not a comprehensive review of the latest research but rather a compendium of principles designed for the undergraduate student and for readers interested in the physics underlying these phenomena.
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Petit Point
by Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
Captures the lives of personalities from both the academic and industrial world in bite-size stories.
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Fragile Objects
by Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
Written by 1991 Nobel laureate Pierre Gilles de Gennes, this fascinating book addresses topics ranging from soft-matter physics to the activities of science: the role of individual or team work, the relation of discovery to correction, and the interplay of conscience and knowledge. "Reading this book can be compared to strolling through a magnificent garden of fragile objects...I highly recommend it to any reader who is interested in condensed matter physics and science at large."-PHYSICS TODAY
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Dorothy Hodgkin
by Georgina Ferry
A biography of the Nobel Prize-winning chemist and peace activist, this work paints a portrait of an accomplished woman who combined an ambitious career with family responsibilities, often at great cost.
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The Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis (Great Discoveries)
by Sherwin B. Nuland
A narrative of one of the key turning points in medical history.