Description

From the author of the best-selling The Man Who Knew Infinity, comes an unprecedented look at the traditional master-apprentice relationship alive today in modern science. Robert Kanigel takes us into the heady world of a remarkable group of scientists working at the National Institutes of Health and the Johns Hopkins University: a dynasty of American researchers who for more than forty years have made Nobel Prize-and Lasker Award-winning breakthroughs in biomedical science. He brilliantly captures the drama of fine minds and explosice personalities at work-whether Bernard Brodie and Julius Axelrod discovering a new wonder drug called Tylenol or Solomon Snyder and Candace Pert unlocking the chemical secrets of the brain. And as we watch ideas debated, expierments working and failing, careers and relationships tested, and professional honors lost and won, we see close up all that is so deeply human in the practice of science. In a new epilogue to this edition, Kanigel brings us up-to-date on the lives and careers of these unforgettable personalities.