Privileged Hands: A Scientific Life - Hardcover

Vermeij, Geerat

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0716729547 ISBN 13: 9780716729549

Publisher: W H Freeman & Co, 1996

Synopsis

The autobiography of this evolutionary biologist and paleontologist (blind since the age of four), reveals how he overcame his presumed handicap and profited from it, developing an awareness of details completely apart from a reliance on vision. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

About this title

Review:

This remarkable memoir by the great marine biologist Geerat Vermeij, who is perhaps the world's leading authority on marine mollusks and who has been blind since the age of three, resonates on several levels: it is, first of all, a profound and vivid exploration of the current state of evolutionary theory; secondly, an engaging memoir of scientific exploration carried out in exotic locales; and finally, an acute examination of what it means to be sightless. Vermeij's extraordinary life reads like that of one of the great early biological explorers, whose theories were all based on extensive fieldwork in remote spots. It is also an inspiring tale of a man who, thanks to a remarkably devoted and intelligent family and his own inexhaustible scientific curiosity, overcame his handicap to further the sum of human knowledge.

About the Author:

Dr. Geerat Vermeij is a professor at the University of California, Davis.

About this edition

• Publisher: W H Freeman & Co
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0716729547
• ISBN 13: 9780716729549
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 297