How to Win the Nobel Prize: An Unexpected Life in Science (The Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures) - Softcover

Bishop, J. Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674016254 ISBN 13: 9780674016255

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2004

Synopsis

In 1989 Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery that normal genes under certain conditions can cause cancer. In this book, Bishop tells us how he and Varmus made their momentous discovery. More than a lively account of the making of a brilliant scientist, How to Win the Nobel Prize is also a broader narrative combining two major and intertwined strands of medical history: the long and ongoing struggles to control infectious diseases and to find and attack the causes of cancer.

Alongside his own story, that of a youthful humanist evolving into an ambivalent medical student, an accidental microbiologist, and finally a world-class researcher, Bishop gives us a fast-paced and engrossing tale of the microbe hunters. It is a narrative enlivened by vivid anecdotes about our deadliest microbial enemies--the Black Death, cholera, syphilis, tuberculosis, malaria, smallpox, HIV--and by biographical sketches of the scientists who led the fight against these scourges.

Bishop then provides an introduction for nonscientists to the molecular underpinnings of cancer and concludes with an analysis of many of today's most important science-related controversies--ranging from stem cell research to the attack on evolution to scientific misconduct. How to Win the Nobel Prize affords us the pleasure of hearing about science from a brilliant practitioner who is a humanist at heart. Bishop's perspective will be valued by anyone interested in biomedical research and in the past, present, and future of the battle against cancer.

About this title

About the Author:

J. Michael Bishop, M.D., is Chancellor, University of California, San Francisco.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/pdf/BISHOW_excerpt.pdf

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0674016254
• ISBN 13: 9780674016255
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288