Apprentice to Genius: The Making of a Scientific Dynasty / Edition 1

by Robert Kanigel

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801847578
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	11/01/1993
Edition description:	Johns Hopkins P ed.
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	139,772
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.69(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert Kanigel is a professional science writer. His most recent book, The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan, was a national bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for biography in 1992.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Nobel Laureate
2. A Wartime Urgency
3. Steve Brodie, Methyl Orange, and the New Pharmacology
4. Brodie and Axelrod: "Let's Take a Flier on It"
5. Building 3: "All He Had to Do Was Whistle"
6. Separate Ways
7. Julie's Lab
8. The Golden Era
9. Johns Hopkins
10. The Opiate Receptor: "Just Get Hysterical and Do It"
11. The Lasker Flap
12. The Mentor Chain
13. 1985
14. Epilogue: 1993
Acknowledgments
Index

Editorial Reviews

A beguiling combination of sociological and scientific scholarship, straight reporting and titillating voyeurism.
--Isis

As compelling as a Jackie Collins novel, though with bigger words.
--Chicago Tribune

Making extensive use of interviews and anecdote, Kanigel depicts how, in a mentor-to-protege chain starting with James Shannon and moving to Bernard Brodie and then to Julius Axelrod, the legacy of creativity and empirical style has passed to Snyder and then to Pert.
--Science

From the Publisher

As compelling as a Jackie Collins novel, though with bigger words.

Chicago Tribune

A beguiling combination of sociological and scientific scholarship, straight reporting and titillating voyeurism.

Isis

Making extensive use of interviews and anecdote, Kanigel depicts how, in a mentor-to-protege chain starting with James Shannon and moving to Bernard Brodie and then to Julius Axelrod, the legacy of creativity and empirical style has passed to Snyder and then to Pert.

Science

"As compelling as a Jackie Collins novel, though with bigger words."

Chicago Tribune

"Making extensive use of interviews and anecdote, Kanigel depicts how, in a mentor-to-protege chain starting with James Shannon and moving to Bernard Brodie and then to Julius Axelrod, the legacy of creativity and empirical style has passed to Snyder and then to Pert."

Science

A well written exploration of the importance and practicality of the master/apprentice relationship in modern science. Kanigel traces the lineage of scientific research in brain chemistry--from the discovery of acetaminophen in Bernard Brodie's lab, to Candice Pert's isolation of the brain's opiate receptor--in a most human and enlightening way. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews