Passionate Minds: The Inner World of Scientists - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198549040 ISBN 13: 9780198549048

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998

Synopsis

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 this title

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.

From Library Journal:

Physicist and historian, theoretical chemist and poet, physiologist and evolutionary biologist, immunologist and neurobiologist, chemist and novelistAone of the most interesting aspects of this engrossing collection of interviews with some of the world's eminent scientists is that many of the subjects are distinguished by the possession of not just a singular m?tier, but two. Thus Carl Djerassi, the chemist and novelist, is as comfortably loquacious on the subject of the birth control pill, which he virtually invented, as he is on his novels. In this sequel to A Passion for Science (Oxford Univ., 1989. o.p.), scientist Wolpert and BBC radio producer Richards pose thoughtful, unexpected questions, which are met with equally thoughtful, candid responses that help illuminate the motivation and personal processesAe.g., the rationally creative, the intuitively creativeAsuch as involved in the workings of the likes of Djerassi, Murray Gell-Mann, Ronald Hoffman, James Lighthill, Nicole Le Dourain, and 19 other acclaimed scientific minds. A fascinating book for informed lay readers and scholars.ARobert Ballou, Atlanta
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0198549040
• ISBN 13: 9780198549048
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248
• Editor: Wolpert Lewis, Richards Alison