I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists, and Humanity [Hardcover]

Max F. Perutz (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0879695242 | ISBN-13: 978-0879695248 | Publication Date: December 1998 | Edition: 1

In this collection of essays, Nobel Prize-winning protein chemist Max Perutz writes about the pursuit of scientific knowledge, which he sees as an enterprise providing not just a few facts but cause for reflection and revelation, as is a painting or poem. This work includes detective stories, tales of conflict and battle, a woman's love affair with crystals, a man's gruesome fascination with poison gas, Nobel Laureates' geriatric illusions about cancer cures, an onslaught on social relativists, the anticlimactic homecoming of a war hero that led to a Nobel prize, phantom perils that threaten us, and real perils that have been conquered by silent heroes. Perutz seeks to convince us that science is a passionate enterprise and the pursuit of knowledge a sortie into the unknown. He combines potraits of 20th-century giants such as Pauling, Meitner, Medawar, Krebs and others, with glimpses of his own life: his flight from Vienna in the '30s, internment in Britain as an enemy alien in World War II, rescue from the sea after a U-boat attack, and more. His observations on abortion issues, nuclear fuel reprocessing and human rights reflect a lifelong concern for social justice and scientific integrity.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Max Perutz is an extraordinary scientist. After training in chemistry at the University of Vienna during the 1930s, he went to Cambridge and became fascinated by biochemistry just as that discipline was becoming ripe for conquest by scientific heroes. He knew and worked with many of them: William Bragg, J.D. Bernal, Crick and Watson--and became one himself, through his discovery of the structure of hemoglobin, which led to his Nobel Prize in 1962.

Such are the credentials Perutz brings to this wonderful collection of essays, credentials that he uses always to illuminate, never to dominate. In prose that rolls by like countryside seen from the window of a train, Perutz takes the reader traveling through his own life and that of many other leading scientists, giving fresh insights into the workings of first-rate minds.

We meet such characters as Leo Szilard, the inventor of the atomic bomb, who devoted his life to preventing its use, and the German chemist Fritz Haber, the very mirror image of Szilard, who became a real-life Faust. We also learn much about Perutz's own approach to science--including his involvement in a project to harness icebergs in the fight against the Nazis.

With its combination of subject choice and light, often humorous, style, this is one of the best collections of scientific essays to emerge for years. --Robert Matthews, Amazon.co.uk

Review

`Review from previous edition Perutz introduces the giants of 20th-century science gracefully, writing with the lucidity and precision that he brought to his work on proteins. There is something for everyone here.' John L. Casti, Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, New Scientist, 29/05/99

`A splendidly varied and totally readable collection of articles, some new and some previously published elsewhere, but all the better for being drawn together in one volume ... I enjoyed the book straight through on a long flight; it would also be ideal for dipping into. Either way, the sort of book you are sorry to finish.' Ron Fraser, Microbiology Today, February 2000

`If you are interested in science and what makes scientists tick, you will find great enjoyment in this book ... What a wonderful bedside read. This is a book to treasure.' Food Technology in New Zealand, August 1999

`"I Wish I Made Your Angry Earlier" is a joy to read and captures some wonderful insights into the lives of a number of key scientists during their pursuit of knowledge.' Education in Chemistry, September 2000

`This is a wholly captivating book; it has warmth, wit, and style, and not a dull sentence. I urge you to read, enjoy, and learn.' Walter Gratzer, Nature

`The essays are beautifully written, with flashes of wit and humour ... I read this as a bedtime book ... when I finally found that there was no more to read, I felt quite disappointed - no more chocolates in the box!' Nature Medicine --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 354 pages
• Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 1 edition (December 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879695242
• ISBN-13: 978-0879695248
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,910,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Charming prose, plenty of surprises, April 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists, and Humanity (Hardcover)

Perutz is not only a biochemist and a Nobel Laureate physicist, but a witty and graceful writer to boot, and readers will be in for a treat. But more than the character sketches of great scientific minds like Szilard and Monod, I appreciated two startling stories in particular, one of which is told in more fascinating detail than I'd encountered before, and the other, which is shocking and, if true, deserving of wider publicity. The first story details the work of Nobel prize-winning chemist Fritz Haber, whose synthesis of ammonia enabled Germany to sustain its military effort in WWI. Haber, a gentle man of tremendous culture and erudition, was also ambitious. Perutz describes in more detail than is readily available elsewhere Haber's efforts to sustain chemical warfare experiments after the war under the guise of agricultural research. Tragically, he supervised the development of Zyklon B, a deadly gas that would later be used to exterminate millions of people of Jewish descent, including some of Haber's own relatives. Fortunately for him, Haber died in exile before learning the full extent, and horror, of his folly. More startling to me was the story of Albert Schatz who, Perutz contends, is the real discoverer of streptomycin. Schatz, writes Perutz, "was the son of poor Jewish farmers in Connecticut and had studied soil microbiology to find ways of increasing the yields on his father's unproductive farm. He embarked on the search for antibiotics only because Waksman made it a condition of his meager offer of $40 a month to work in his laboratory; but then Schatz threw himself into the research, testing hundreds of different soil micro-organisms for antibacterial activity." Perutz claims that Schatz displayed all the initiative and effort warranted for a Nobel Prize, and that Waksman did nothing more than sit in his office while the experiments were going on. Later, claims Perutz, Waksman denied Schatz the recognition he so richly deserved. Unless I missed something, I wonder why Perutz is telling us this only now? Wouldn't it have been better for this information to have been revealed when Waksman was alive to defend himself? And can we expect forthcoming reference books to take note and set the record straight?