Download or read book The Bourbaki Gambit written by Carl Djerassi and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1996-10-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A beautifully ingenious, funny, brilliantly intelligent, and moving tale of very human scientists. A splendid novel.”—Iris Murdoch At the age of 68, distinguished Princeton science professor Max Weiss is bribed into taking an early retirement. Frustratingly aware that his best years are not yet behind him, Weiss devises an inventive revenge in the form of “Dr. Diana Skordylis”—a pseudonym for a partnership among Weiss and three aging colleagues, each with an ax to grind against the scientific community. What the Skordylis group doesn’t anticipate, however, is the unbridled success of their venture: the discovery of PCR, one of the most important breakthroughs in contemporary biomedical science. Professional jealousy soon threatens Diana Skordylis’s life. As the force of ego tests the bonds of collaboration, the reader is treated to a fascinating glimpse inside the worlds of academia and scientific enterprise. “A subtle meditation on scientific personality . . . An odd blend of literature, philosophy, and science writing, as creative as any organic potpourri that Djerassi might have mixed up in his laboratory.”—The Washington Post “This is a novel of ideas, quite literally, yet it flashes with wit and is often quite charming, thanks to well-drawn characters at ease with mind-boggling concepts who talk about them in a down-to-earth way.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Download or read book The Bourbaki Gambit written by Carl Djerassi and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book This Man s Pill written by Carl Djerassi and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2003-04-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: October 15, 1951 marks the birthday of one of the key episodes in 20th century social history: the first synthesis of a steroid oral contraceptive in a small laboratory in Mexico City - an event that triggered the development of the Pill. Carl Djerassi has been honoured worldwide for that accomplishment, which ultimately changed the life of women and the nature of human reproduction in ways that were not foreseeable. On the 50th anniversary of this pivotal event, Djerassi weaves a compelling personal narrative full of self-reflection and occasional humour on the impact this invention has had on the world at large and on him personally. He credits the Pill with radically altering his academic career at Stanford University to become one of the few American chemists writing novels and plays. This Man's Pill presents a forcefully revisionist account of the early history of the Pill, debunking many of the journalistic and romantic accounts of its scientific origin. Djerassi does not shrink from exploring why we have no Pill for men or why Japan only approved the Pill in 1999 (together with Viagra). Emphasizing that development of the Pill occurred during the post-War period of technological euphoria, he believes that it could not be repeated in today's climate. Would the sexual revolution of the 1960s or the impending separation of sex ("in bed") and fertilization ("under the microscope") still have happened? This Man's Pill answers such questions while providing a uniquely authoritative account of a discovery that changed the world.

Download or read book The SciArtist written by Walter Grünzweig and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2012 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title presents criticism, commentaries, and creative responses to Carl Djerassi's literary texts, taking the author's achievements far beyond 'the Pill'

Download or read book People of the Bomb written by Hugh Gusterson and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: E.L. Doctorow suggested that in the years since 1945 the nuclear bomb has come to compose the identity of the American people. Developing this theme, Hugh Gusterson shows how the military-industrial complex has transformed public culture & personal psychology in America, to create a nuclear people.

Download or read book Newton s Darkness Two Dramatic Views written by Carl Djerassi and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2003-10-28 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ”What purpose is served by showing that England's greatest natural philosopher is flawed … like other mortals?” asks one of the characters in Newton's Darkness. “We need unsullied heroes!” But what if the hero is sullied? At stake is an issue that is as germane today as it was 300 years ago: a scientist's ethics must not be divorced from scientific accomplishments. There is probably no other scientist of whom so many biographies and other historical analyses have been published than Isaac Newton — all of them in the standard format of documentary prose because of their didactic purpose to transmit historical information. Newton's Darkness, however, illuminates the darker aspects of Newton's persona through two historically grounded plays dealing with two of the bitterest struggles in the history of science.The name of Isaac Newton appears in virtually every survey of the public's choice for the most important persons of the second millennium. Yet the term “darkness” can be applied to much of Newton's personality. Adjectives that have been used to describe facets of his personality include “remote”, “lonely”, “secretive”, “introverted”, “melancholic”, “humorless”, “puritanical”, “cruel”, “vindictive” and, perhaps worst of all, “unforgiving”. The trait most relevant to the present book is Newton's obsessively competitive nature, which was often out of proportion to the warranted facts, as demonstrated in three of Newton's best-known bitter conflicts: with the physicist Robert Hooke, the astronomer royal John Flamsteed, and a German contemporary of almost equal intellectual prowess, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz — the last fight eventually turning into an England vs Continental Europe competition. It is two of these three relentless drawn-out battles that are illuminated in Newton's Darkness in the form of historically grounded drama.After a summary of the historical evidence, the book starts with the Newton-Hooke struggle (Chapter 2), which was conducted mano a mano, and is then followed by little-known aspects of the Newton-Leibniz confrontation (Chapter 3), which was fought largely through surrogates — notably the infamous, anonymous committee of 11 Fellows of the Royal Society./a

Download or read book No written by Carl Djerassi and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000-11-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling novel based on the high-stakes biotech industry and the science behind Viagra from the internationally known “Father of the Pill.” The fourth installment of Carl Djerassi’s pioneering “science-in-fiction” tetralogy tells the story of a husband and wife team who devise new solutions to problems associated with sex and reproduction. Renu Krishnan is an Indian-born, American-educated scientist who discovers how NO (nitric oxide) can help men with erectile dysfunction—the scientific rationale behind Viagra. At the same time, her husband, Israeli scientist Jephtah Cohn, develops a new approach to ovulation prediction, which is also based on factual research. When Wall street gets wind of their discoveries, the couple catapults in the fast paced world of lawyers and IPOs, where scientists are now a hot commodity. Deftly exploring the demanding worlds of academia and high finance, Djerassi brings back many characters from his three earlier novels for a satisfying conclusion.

Download or read book Foreplay written by Carl Djerassi and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2011-03-24 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno were intellectual giants of the first half of the twentieth century. The drama Foreplay explores their deeply human and psychologically intriguing private lives, focusing on professional and personal jealousies, the mutual dislike of Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, the association between Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille, and the border between erotica and pornography. Djerassi’s extensive biographical research brings to light many fascinating details revealed in the dialogues among the characters, including Adorno’s obsession with his dreams, Benjamin’s admiration for Franz Kafka, and the intimate correspondence between Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin. The introduction of a fictitious character, Fräulein X, intensifies the complex interplay among the four lead protagonists and allows for a comparison of Adorno’s philandering and the similar behavior of Martin Heidegger, whose affair with Hannah Arendt is well known. Foreplay brims with intrigue and the friction created when strong personalities clash.

Download or read book The Same and Not the Same written by Roald Hoffmann and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobel laureate Roald Hoffman confronts some of the major ethical controversies in chemistry today. Expertly weaving together examples from the worlds of art, literature, and philosophy, Hoffmann illustrates his uniquely accessible dialectic about the creative activity of chemists.

Download or read book Scientific Authorship written by Mario Biagioli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-27 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the seventeenth century our ideas of scientific authorship have expanded and changed dramatically. In this ambitious volume of new work, Mario Biagioli and Peter Galison have brought together historians of science, literary historians, and historians of the book. Together they track the changing nature and identity of the author in science, both historically and conceptually, from the emergence of scientific academies in the age of Galileo to concerns with large-scale multiauthorship and intellectual property rights in the age of cloning labs and pharmaceutical giants. How, for example, do we decide whether a chemical compound is discovered or invented? What does it mean to patent genetic material? Documenting the emergence of authorship in the late medieval period, authorship's limits and its fragmentation, Scientific Authorship offers a collective history of a complex relationship.

Download or read book Scientific Freedom written by Simona Giordano and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-09-13 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Scientific Freedom is the first comprehensive collection covering both the state of scientific progress and the ethics, law and history of scientific research. The book gives readers a fascinating range of perspectives on matters of scientific research that directly affect all of us. Examining the ethical, legal, social, economic and political issues surrounding freedom of scientific research, the book evaluates ways in which national and international policies can impact upon individuals' access to potentially life-saving treatment, cures and technologies, and can therefore affect human life and death. With contributions from Nobel Laureates, representatives of patients' associations, scientists, scholars and politicians, this book provides a concise and comprehensive view of the limitations and dangers facing the future of innovation and scientific progress.

Download or read book Currere and the Environmental Autobiography written by Marilyn Doerr and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2004 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation "This book documents a high school ecology class that employs currere, William Pinar's idea for curriculum as autobiographical text, and analyzes the course's success from the author's point of view as both the practitioner and the curriculum developer."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Download or read book Passionate Minds written by Lewis Wolpert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-09-25 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The popular stereotype of the scientist as mad boffin or weedy nerd has been peddled widely in film and fiction, with the implication that the world of science is far removed from the intellectual and emotional messiness of other human activities. In Passionate Minds, distinguished scientist Lewis Wolpert investigates the style and motivation of some of the most eminent scientists in the world. In this stimulating collection of conversations, scientists in fields as diverse as particle physics and evolutionary biology explore how their backgrounds have shaped their careers and discoveries - how being an outsider or an "innocent" can play an invaluable role in overcoming conventional barriers to new understanding. Being a little crazy does seem to help. As Nobel laureate for physics Sheldon Glashow says, "If you would simply take all the kookiest ideas of the early 1970s and put them together you would have made for yourself the theory which is, in fact, the correct theory of nature, so it was like madness..." These personal explorations with individual scientists are not only accessible and truly fascinating in their insights into the minds of some of the greatest men and women of science, but they also provide a strong case that the life and works of our leading scientists are at least as illuminating and interesting as the personalities of the latest literary prizewinners. A sequel to A Passion for Science, this book will delight and intrigue scientists and non-scientists alike.

Download or read book Thirteenth Labor written by Eric J . Chaisson and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2020-07-26 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is emerged from an insightful essay by the American Nobel chemist Dudley Herschbach, speculating about how the mythological Hercules might have tackled a hypothetical, monumental task, or "thirteenth labor," such as weighing the Earth's atmosphere.

Download or read book Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice written by Michael M. J. Fischer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents

Download or read book Lab Lit written by Olga Pilkington and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lab Lit: Exploring Literary and Cultural Representations of Science is the first formal, systematic, scholarly investigation of laboratory literature from the perspective of literary studies. Lab Lit as a new genre has received a lot of public and media attention due to its compelling presentation of science practitioners and the relatable explanations of the scientific advancements that have shaped modern society and will continue to do so. However, the genre has been largely overlooked by scholars. This book is an introduction to the world of science for those who up till now have been immersed primarily in the world of literature. The anthology contains essays that discuss Lab Lit novels using a variety of analytical approaches. It also features theoretical essays that explore the social and literary backgrounds of Lab Lit and help the reader position the critical pieces within appropriate contexts.

Download or read book Prize Fight written by Morton Meyers, M.D. and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We often think of scientists as dispassionate and detached, nobly laboring without any expectation of reward. But scientific research is much more complicated and messy than this ideal, and scientists can be torn by jealousy, impelled by a need for recognition, and subject to human vulnerability and fallibility. In Prize Fight , Emeritus Chair at SUNY School of Medicine Morton Meyers pulls back the curtain to reveal the dark side of scientific discovery. From allegations of stolen authorship to fabricated results and elaborate hoaxes, he shows us how too often brilliant minds are reduced to petty jealousies and promising careers cut short by disputes over authorship or fudged data. Prize Fight is a dramatic look at some of the most notable discoveries in science in recent years, from the discovery of insulin, which led to decades of infighting and even violence, to why the 2003 Nobel Prize in Medicine exposed how often scientific objectivity is imperiled.