Max Perutz and the Secret of Life - Hardcover

Ferry, Georgina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879697857 ISBN 13: 9780879697853

Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2007

Synopsis

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 this title

About the Author

Georgina Ferry is a former staff editor on New Scientist, and contributor to 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.

Review

Perutz made a wise choice when he chose to invite Georgina Ferry to write his life. The result is an engaging, beautifully written book deserving a place on the shelf of everyone who likes to read about science and scientists. Ferry takes Perutz s career through to the end of his life with his work on the amyloid associated with Alzheimer s disease. Whether dealing with personal matters or explaining the science, Ferry handles the subject matter with ease and clarity. As the official biographer, Ferry has handled Perutz s mix of vanity and self-deprecation, vicious critique and devoted admiration, diplomatically, reporting not judging. Medical History --Medical History

A biographer, it seems to me, walks a fine line: he or she needs to be truthful, enthusiastic and selective without suppressing, inventing or distorting the individual whose life is under scrutiny. He or she must allow his or her readers to feel, as well as to understand, the passions, foibles and idiosyncrasies that made his or her subject a person while dealing with family members and intimates who might object to a biography on the grounds that it s nobody s business. On all counts, Ferry s beautifully written book meets and passes the test with flying colors... In telling the story of this admirable man and exceptional scientist, Ferry has succeeded in making her subject live again for the reader. Nature Medicine --Nature

Ferry does a superb job of using the correspondence, archival sources, interviews, and other traditional tools of biography writing...Teachers of undergraduates will treasure [this book] for the rich coverage of the birth of molecular biology and the circumstances that made it possible. The Quarterly Review of Biology --The Quarterly Review of Biology

About this edition

• Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0879697857
• ISBN 13: 9780879697853
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352