science books
Summer Reading Suggestions from Scientists: Karl Deisseroth
Posted on by Moderator
Non-Science Selection:
Romila Thapar, History of Early India from Origins to AD 1300. Last January, I was traveling in several cities in India and asked my hosts far too many questions about early Indian history. In the end, one of them (Narasimhan Ram, publisher of the newspaper The Hindu) gave me a number of books, including this text written by a leading Indian historian Romila Thapar. Beyond Thapar’s erudite and level-headed historical scholarship, she did not refrain from fascinating speculation. For example, she speculates on the strongest initial threads of political power, beyond conquest, arising in ritual and culture—much discussed, but here tied to specific archaeological/prehistorical data. Although the specifics in the book itself are on the movement of peoples, conflicts, and cultural shifts that defined the early demographics, politics, and linguistic structures of the Indian subcontinent, the big ideas map readily onto issues that are pressing in the modern world, regarding migration and the sources of cultural authority. The themes of human history that we are reliving today are so vivid, that every few pages a sentence or paragraph would leap out from the page, and I found I had to stop and put down the book for quite some time before continuing—unusual (at least for me) in reading a text of this kind.
Science Selection:
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table. Every few years, rereading this brief masterpiece published by such a gifted writer, chemist, and direct witness to the extremes of the human experience is rewarding in a new way. The vignettes within this volume, at each reading, seem to provide a fresh perspective on the human condition, and remain relevant despite (or perhaps because of) the rapidity of change in this condition. Among its more explicitly scientific themes, the special beauty of chemistry shines forth throughout (with particular resonance for me, as with many biologists, since my own first steps toward science were from a foundation of organic and synthetic chemistry, and still to this day all of my approaches to neuroscience and psychiatry remain rooted in chemistry). The book is also autobiographical and historical, infused with Levi’s personal perspective on the horrific sociology of rising totalitarianism; tragically, this perspective may be increasingly relevant today, and historians, linguists, social scientists, anthropologists, and biologists all find meaning here. The book is composed of many independent short chapters, each titled by an element—and each reader seems to end up with a different list of favorites (the book includes purely fictional components, and, if you only have time for one of the more imaginative chapters to form an opinion of those, you can start with my personal favorite among the historical fantasies, “Lead”).
Karl Deisseroth
Credit: Alison Yin/ AP Images for HHMI
Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD is the D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University; a foreign adjunct professor at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm; a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; and a visiting professor at Keio University, Tokyo. Dr. Deisseroth has developed a number of innovative research tools to study the brain, human behavior, and mental illness. Since 2014, Dr. Deisseroth has received two Dickson Prizes, the Albany Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences, and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Science.
Summer Reading Suggestions from Scientists: Shirley Tilghman
Posted on by Dr. Shirley Tilghman
Non-Science Selection:
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer. In his brilliant debut novel, this American writer, who was born in Vietnam, uses the end and aftermath of the Vietnam War as a dramatic backdrop to explore the nature of identity and conflicts of loyalty, The anonymous narrator is a jumble of identities—the son of a Vietnamese woman and a French priest; a Communist working undercover as an aide to a South Vietnamese general; and a blood brother of both a C.I.A. assassin and a Vietcong leader. He believes in the revolution, but is haunted when he is required to murder in its name, and, ultimately, is abandoned by its leaders.
The narrative begins with a vivid portrayal of the last days of the fall of Saigon, as the narrator works feverishly to extract himself, his general and family off the rooftop of the American embassy. They ultimately land in California, where the general immediately begins to plot his return to Saigon. The narrator is hired to advise a filmmaker (referred to only as “the auteur,” but clearly meant to be Francis Ford Coppola) on a film about the war. The narrator believes he has been hired to give an authentic voice to the Vietnamese, whose sufferings and struggle have largely been untold in the West, but he fails in tragicomic fashion. In the end, the narrator is torn in two by his competing loyalties to politics and friendship. This is a deeply moving story of a young man in search of meaning in his life.
Science Selection:
Jonathan Weiner,The Beak of the Finch. The Pulitzer Prize winner for non-fiction in 1995, this masterful book tells the 25-year story of Peter and Rosemary Grant’s study of evolution in real time in the Galapagos Islands. Beginning in 1973, the Grants, who recently retired from the faculty of Princeton University, camped several months every year on a barren rock (Daphne Major) in the Galapagos, meticulously documenting the changes in size and shape of the beaks of Darwin’s famous finches in response to changes in climate. Thanks to the dramatic 1982-83 El Nino, the Grants were able to show that as the normally arid climate, which selected for finches with sturdy short beaks that are good at cracking dry hard seeds, became tropical, finches with long narrow beaks that could drink nectar from the now-abundant vegetation came to predominate. Natural selection in action! In the course of telling this extraordinary story of scientific inquiry, Weiner writes clearly and engagingly about how Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace developed the theory of natural selection, and why it is the cornerstone on which all of biology rests.
Shirley Tilghman
Credit: Denise Applewhite
Shirley M. Tilghman, PhD is president emerita and professor of molecular biology at Princeton University. She is well known for her scientific achievements as a mammalian developmental geneticist and for her national leadership on behalf of women in science. Her many accolades include: a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Developmental Biology, the Genetics Society of America Medal, and the L’Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.
Summer Reading Suggestions from Scientists: Harold Varmus
Posted on by Dr. Harold Varmus
Summertime! Long weekends, a vacation, the threat of boredom. Time for uninterrupted reading—on beaches or in air-conditioned bedrooms. A chance to look beyond the best-seller lists or the daily news to dive, with full concentration, into one or two books that some friend has argued might be a life-changing experience. In that spirit, here are two for which I would make that argument to almost any friend.
In the sphere of science: The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science, by Richard Holmes (HarperCollins, 2008). Holmes is primarily a literary biographer (of Coleridge and other Romantic poets), but also an art historian and a science junkie, who has written about ballooning and women scientists. Of the many books I’ve read about the growth of the scientific enterprise, The Age of Wonder stands out for several reasons: its deep engagement with the full range of cultural and political currents in which science arises; its focus on the excitement about discovery—geographical, astronomical, chemical, biological—that permeated the late 18th and early 19th centuries; and its absorption with personal histories of people who made those discoveries. Holmes is a superb storyteller and drawn to the complexities of life (especially in Britain) that influenced the talented people—Joseph Banks, Humphry Davy, several members of the Herschel family—who made novel observations that changed our perceptions of the world and solidified the place of science.
Summer Reading Suggestions from Scientists
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Now that we are in the “dog days” of summer, it’s time again to consider which books to pack (or load onto your e-reader) for your well-deserved getaway to the beach and beyond. With so many interesting titles published every year, it’s never easy to make recommendations. But I thought it might be fun to ask a few distinguished researchers to share a few of their favorite reads—both about science and other things in the world at large. Some might be classics; some might have just been published. It’s up to the guests to decide.
During the month of August, the NIH Director’s Blog will run a series of guest posts in which some of biomedical science’s most creative minds discuss one or two of the books they’ve been reading. I’m sure what they share will be informative, provocative, and possibly even provide you with a few more possibilities for your late summer reading list. So, please check out the blog next Tuesday for the first installment in our scientists’ summer reading series, which happens to be penned by an avid reader who also holds a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Can anyone guess who it is?
