Customer Reviews

My Life in Science: Sydney Brenner, A Life in Science (Lives in Science)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book was produced from the transcript of fifteen hour videotaped autobiography, as told to Lewis Wolpert. It has 191 pages of interviews and seven pages index. For some reason, the book format is bizarre. It's like a double-spaced manuscript with small fonts; very difficult to read. It doesn't have any figure or table or fun stuff. Just a text. Four pictures of him are included.

This is a typical science-for-popular-audience type book. Lots of amusing anecdotes in addition to the basic science story. But this book will be a little too specific for general audience, and too ambiguous for professionals. As Brenner is already the most well-known molecular biologist, most facts are not so new to people who knows this field (mRNA, C. elegans story). It doesn't have much behind-the-scene information (like the Watson's DH) either. I wish he included his perspective on more recent topics such as RNAi, functional genomics and bioinformatics. And I was expecting a little more political aspect, as he is from South Africa, but this book is 100% about biology.

I personally appreciate his criticism of Karl Popper's falsificationism, the importance of which I feel many British scientists overstate. Hume's "problem of induction" itself doesn't exist in the practical biology world from the beginning. I think there is no need to develop Popperian demarcation out of Logical positivism for this.

I recommend this book.