A History of Molecular Biology – Michael Morange ***

Michel Morange’s efforts in the history of molecular biology come to life in his appropriately named book, The History of Molecular Biology. While we take for granted now that DNA is the genetic material, this conclusion stemmed from many experiments and this is where the book starts. We all know the progress made since then with things like cloning and DNA amplification (polymerase chain reaction). Michel Morange guides us on a historical trip through these developments and even takes a look into the future. The book is not organized in a traditional chronological order. Rather it is divided into themes such as “The chemical nature of the gene” or “Deciphering the genetic code”. Within each theme, however, the events are outlined in chronological order.

The strongest point of the book was to put the development of molecular biology into context. It provided an eye-opening view of the competition between various schools of thought and controversies about the discoveries. Its major weakness is the lack of biographical material about the individual scientists, who I am sure were interesting people in their own rights. Another weakness is that the book was originally written in French and was translated by Matthew Cobb. I found that the translation was incomplete in that some of the French sentence structure remained, surprising since Cobb himself seems to be a very good writer and the author of delightful The Egg and Sperm Race.

Overall this book was very interesting and fun to read. I recommend it thoroughly to those unfamiliar with molecular biology, although this type of reader may have to do some research to clarify some of the concepts. I even more strongly recommend it to people who are familiar with molecular biology but who have not kept up. The book provides an excellent review of the material with the addition of the competitive context of the times.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Stephen Goldberg

Comments

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin Five Way Interview

Rakhat-Bi Abdyssagin (born in 1999) is a distinguished composer, concert pianist, music theorist and researcher. Three of his piano CDs have been released in Germany. He started his undergraduate degree at the age of 13 in Kazakhstan, and having completed three musical doctorates in prominent Italian music institutions at the age of 20, he has mastered advanced composition techniques. In 2024 he completed a PhD in music at the University of St Andrews / Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (researching timbre-texture co-ordinate in avant- garde music), and was awarded The Silver Medal of The Worshipful Company of Musicians, London. He has held visiting affiliations at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and UCL, and has been lecturing and giving talks internationally since the age of 13. His latest book is Quantum Mechanics and Avant Garde Music . What links quantum physics and avant-garde music? The entire book is devoted to this question. To put it briefly, there are many different link...

Everything is Predictable - Tom Chivers *****

There's a stereotype of computer users: Mac users are creative and cool, while PC users are businesslike and unimaginative. Less well-known is that the world of statistics has an equivalent division. Bayesians are the Mac users of the stats world, where frequentists are the PC people. This book sets out to show why Bayesians are not just cool, but also mostly right. Tom Chivers does an excellent job of giving us some historical background, then dives into two key aspects of the use of statistics. These are in science, where the standard approach is frequentist and Bayes only creeps into a few specific applications, such as the accuracy of medical tests, and in decision theory where Bayes is dominant. If this all sounds very dry and unexciting, it's quite the reverse. I admit, I love probability and statistics, and I am something of a closet Bayesian*), but Chivers' light and entertaining style means that what could have been the mathematical equivalent of debating angels on...

The Bright Side - Sumit Paul-Choudhury ***

When I first saw The Bright Side (the subtitle doesn't help), I was worried it was a self-help manual, a format that rarely contains good science. In reality, Sumit Paul-Choudhury does not give us a checklist for becoming an optimist or anything similar - and there is a fair amount of science content. But to be honest, I didn't get on very well with this book. What Paul-Choudhury sets out to do is to both identify what optimism is and to assess its place in a world where we are beset with big problems such as climate change (which he goes into in some detail) that some activists position as an existential threat. This is all done in a friendly, approachable fashion. In that sense it's a classic pop-psychology title. For me, Paul-Choudhury certainly has it right about the lack of logic of extreme doom-mongers, such as Extinction Rebellion and teenage climate protestors, and his assessment of the nature of optimism seems very reasonable, if presented at a fairly overview leve...

Search This Blog