An entertaining account of a peripatetic career, academic infighting, and the colorful, charismatic, or eccentric mentors,...
A skillful memoir and account of groundbreaking research by the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Ramakrishnan—the senior scientist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and president of the Royal Society in London—arrived in the United States in 1971 and obtained a doctorate in theoretical physics, but then he lost interest and devoted his life to biology. The author won his prize for his role in determining the structure of the ribosome. Anyone who has taken high school biology knows that the DNA inside each cell guides the assembly of small molecules into huge ones—proteins—that make up every living creature. DNA, discovered in the 1860s, is simple; in the 1950s, learning how it worked jump-started a revolution in biology. Protein assembly occurs in the ribosome, which is complex. Each cell contains millions. Soon after it was first observed in 1955, scientists sought to learn more. Years after joining their efforts, Ramakrishnan realized that “after forty years of trying to solve how ribosomes work by chemical methods alone,” it was impossible “without a more detailed knowledge of the structure.” Working mostly through X-ray crystallography, he and his lab staff gradually teased out its precise makeup. Rewards and fame—mostly within the scientific community—followed. The author also delivers a portrait of the ribosome that will satisfy even undemanding readers. Very few will understand his explanation of crystallography, but it doesn’t matter. Readers will accept that it’s a maddeningly difficult technique as they take in a vivid description of 20 years of frustration, tedium, and improvisation as he slowly approached his goal.
An entertaining account of a peripatetic career, academic infighting, and the colorful, charismatic, or eccentric mentors, colleagues, and competitors the author encountered as well as an often cynical view of the scientific establishment.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-465-09336-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
