I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier

Essays on Science, Scientists and Humanity
Erscheinungsjahr 2002
ISBN: 978-0-19-859027-9
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 372 Seiten, Format (B × H): 130 mm x 196 mm, Gewicht: 406 g

Science is no quiet life. Imagination, creativity, ambition, and conflict are as vital and abundant in science as in artistic endeavours. In this collection of essays, Nobel Laureate Max Perutz explores a remarkable range of scientific topics with the lucidity and precision that he brought to his pioneering work in protein chemistry.

His book includes detective stories, tales of conflict and battle, one woman's love affair with crystals, a man's gruesome fascination with poison gas, the phantom perils that have been conquered by silent heroes.

Perutz argues that science is a passionate exercise and that the pursuit of knowledge is a sortie into the unknown. The pages of this book are populated with some of the intellectual giants of twentieth century science - Pauling, Meitner, Medawar, Krebs, and Jacob, among others. In addition, Perutz's own life provides entertaining anecdotes, including his internment in the UK as an anemy alien, his involvement in a scheme to make ships of ice for refuelling aircraft in the North Atlantic during the War, and the sheer joy he took from his work.

'This.Is a wholly captivating book; it has warmth, wit, and style, and not a dull sentence. I urge you to read, enjoy, and learn.' Walter Gratzer, Nature

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Human- und Sozialwissenschaften
• Naturwissenschaften Physik Physik Allgemein Geschichte der Physik
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologie / Allgemeines & Theorie Geschichte der Psychologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Populärwissenschaftliche Werke
• Naturwissenschaften Chemie Chemie Allgemein Geschichte der Chemie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Part 1: PLOUGHSHARES INTO SWORDS

- Friend or foe of mankind

- Splitting the atom

- The man who patented the bomb

- Why did the Germans not make the bomb?

- Bomb designer turned dissident

- Liberating France

- Enemy alien

- Part 2: HOW TO MAKE DISCOVERIES

- High on science

- Deconstructing Pasteur

- The battle over vitamin C

- A mystery of the tropics

- The forgotten plague

- What holds molecules together?

- I wish I'd made you angry earlier

- Big fleas have little fleas

- How the secret of life was discovered

- Dangerous misprints

- A deadly inheritance

- Darwin was right

- A passion for crystals

- PART 3: RIGHTS AND WRONGS

- By what right do we invoke human rights?

- The right to choose

- Swords into ploughshares: does nuclear energy endanger us?

- PART 4: MORE ABOUT DISCOVERIES

- The second secret of life

- How W.L.Bragg invented X-ray analysis

- Life's energy cycle

- The hormone that makes nerves grow

- How nerves conduct electricity

- My commonplace book

- Notes and references

- Subject index

Über Autor(innen)

Max F. Perutz, FRS, was the Director of the Medical Research Council Laboratory for Molecular Biology from its foundation in 1962 until 1979. In addition to many other awards and honours, he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1972 for the first solution of the structure of proteins.