Max Perutz and the Secret of Life (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Ferry succeeds in bringing [Perutz] sharply to life....[she] avoids the pop-psychology that permeates so many modern biographies, while offering insight into Perutz’s temperament and behaviour.”
—Gregory A. Petsko, Brandeis University (Nature)

“Georgina Ferry has written a superb biography of one of the most influential and likable figures of modern science, Max Perutz of Cambridge University...In places the book reads like a novel, but its facts are always correct...Ferry does a magnificent job of expressing the doubts, difficulties, and uncertainty of Max Perutz’s life...Unreservedly recommended!”
—Protein Science

“Ferry continues to shine as a first-rate science writer with this new biography.”
—Choice

“In 2002, Georgina Ferry, author of an acclaimed biography of Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin, was called to the bedside of the dying 88-year-old Max Perutz, a former friend and colleague of Hodgkin’s. His request was simple—do for him what she had done for Hodgkin. The result is Max Perutz and the secret of life, a thoroughly engaging account of the birth of molecular biology as told through the life story of one of its most enigmatic founders...

[T]his is a wonderful book, effectively presenting a complex man in a complex time and reminding us that unusual career training pathways, scientific rigor, and collaborative transdisciplinary science are not new ideas of the 21st century.”
—The Journal of Clinical Investigation

“Biographies that are most apt to appeal to physicians offer a coherent and accurate account of the subject s contributions to medicine, along with insights into his or her character and personality. Georgina Ferry amply fulfills these criteria in her account of the life of Max Perutz, the Nobel laureate who worked out the structure of hemoglobin and the chemical basis of its physiological properties. Her lively narrative draws us into the world of high-powered science, with its triumphs, frustrations, and foibles.”
—The New England Journal of Medicine

“...an evenhanded look at the achievements of one of the greats of 20th-century science.”
—Chemical & Engineering News

“[A]n engaging read. Ferry freely steps back in time with almost every chapter to develop a particular theme. The result is an insightful look at Perutz’s life and work and the role he played in what was arguably the most productive collaboration of scientists in twentieth-century molecular biology.” --Bulletin for the History of Chemistry

Product Description

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.

All orders from outside of the United States, Europe, and China must be directed to Chatto and Windus, an imprint of Random House.

I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists, and Humanity;
Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life;
Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology (Expanded Edition);
Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology (First Edition);
The Eighth Day of Creation: The Makers of the Revolution in Biology;
Inspiring Science: Jim Watson and the Age of DNA;
The Statue Within: An Autobiography;
George Beadle, An Uncommon Farmer: The Emergence of Genetics in the 20th Century;
Conversations in Genetics: An Oral History of Our Intellectual Heritage in Genetics;
A Passion for DNA: Genes, Genomes, and Society;
We Can Sleep Later: Alfred D. Hershey and the Origins of Molecular Biology

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 1 edition (December 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879697857
• ISBN-13: 978-0879697853
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #647,708 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Determined Researcher, A Brilliant Organizer, December 1, 2007

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Max Perutz used to say that he was famous, but that few people knew what it was he was famous for. His name may not resonate with household familiarity, but he was a Nobel laureate for his work on the structure of hemoglobin and was enormously influential in organizing other scientists working in what was then a new field of molecular biology. He died in 2002, working up until his last days, and although he was an accomplished writer, he didn't get around to writing an autobiography because he consciously decided that his time was best spent researching instead. Now there is a fine biography that will help readers appreciate what he was famous for, _Max Perutz and the Secret of Life_ (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press) by Georgina Ferry. Ferry is one of our best science writers, and this admiring but unfawning biography not only tells the story of its protagonist, but also illustrates how science gets done as a cooperative and competitive enterprise.

When he was 22 in 1936, Perutz and his family left his native Austria, but in Cambridge during the war he was arrested and shipped with Nazis to Canada merely because of his national origin. His work resumed upon his release and oath of allegiance to the King. It was ever after would based on x-ray crystallography, a field drawing from mathematics, chemistry, biology, and physics. The crystals Perutz used were not geologic samples, but crystallized versions of proteins, and he latched on to hemoglobin because it really was involved in the secrets of life; it was known that it carried oxygen throughout the body (he called it the "molecular lung"), but no one knew how it did so. Over decades of research he showed not only the structure, but how it flexed and turned in order to take on oxygen or give it off. Perutz was not the sort of brilliant scientist who had flashes of eureka moments. He got to his lab and worked hard until answers came. His answers were often wrong, shot down by others, and it is perhaps because he understood the nature of scientific research as a group endeavor that Perutz was brilliant in organizing others. He established the research unit in which Watson and Crick found DNA's structure, and as chairman of the Laboratory for Molecular Biology, he fostered an environment that on its own has produced more Nobel prizes than many developed countries.

Perutz had more than his share of foibles. He had a passion for climbing mountains and skiing that could eclipse his interest in research or even in his family. Nonetheless, he was sickly most of his life, and had a peculiar diet that required him to eat bananas that had ripened to black. He had a naïve belief that scientific reasoning would overcome the flaws within politics and religion. His life as Ferry tells it, however, is full of wonderful lessons, like the one that a good brain is a boon, but hard work and perseverance are what make success. Another one is that scientific researchers work best in a chaotic environment with only partial controls upon it. Another one is that the best way to understand any physical object is to understand its internal structure. And finally, a maxim that was one of Perutz's favorites, "In science, truth always wins." Perutz left a legacy of his own research, and more importantly of effective organization of scientific teams, that will continue to foster the scientific victories he knew were coming.