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Title: Genes, Girls, and Gamow: After the Double Helix by James D. Watson ISBN: 0-375-41283-2 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 29 January, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.06 (16 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: AHA!
Comment: One wonders why a man with such a splendid scientific intellect, generating analytical and critical thoughts when it comes to how nature works, can be so uncritical about himself. Indeed, GENES, GIRLS, AND GAMOW presents interesting cameos of the Who's Who of 20th Century science with whom Dr. James D. Watson spent some time. We are given a view filtered through his personality of how these people entertained themselves. It is somewhat written, however, like entries in a laboratory notebook.
Perhaps what Watson most candidly reveals about himself is why his life and, indeed, his public pronouncements were so punctuated with misogynisms. Man and boy, he was quite socially and sexually immature. He could get the double helix, but he had a lot of trouble getting the girl. Watson's search for the "perfect woman" is similarly grotesque. Life is short. How about a good companion who simply loves you, and you love her back, Dr. Watson?
I think that the cast of characters and author's candor in this book make it interesting and worthwhile reading. However, it ironically accomplishes in uncovering how someone who can't get the girl also doesn't want her in the laboratory. Thus it reveals that just like the notion of a "perfect woman" is a grand illusion so is the idea of a perfect scientist.
Rating: 5
Summary: Life After the Discovery of the Double Helix
Comment: I was a research fellow in CalTech's Kerckhoff Laboratories of Biology when Jim Watson arrived in the autumn of 1953 to join us as a research fellow. Everyone was curious about the person who had come from nowhere to make, along with Francis Crick, one of the great discoveries of the twentieth century. I found him to be very bright, friendly, and bubbling with ideas. Genes, Girls, and Gamow describes the ferment in biology at that time, and his attempts to apply intuition to the problem of how information in DNA translates into proteins. But much of the book is a candid account of his search for the perfect girl to marry. We go through his attempts to woo a string of CalTech girls - all failures. I once suggested to a pretty, intelligent lab assistant that he would be a good catch, since he was sure to get a Nobel prize. She gave me a look that would have frozen melted steel, so I kept silent after that. The account of his pursuit of undergraduate student Christa Mayr is almost painful to read, since he loves her, but she is only lukewarm. It all comes out well, however, when he finally finds the girl of his deams. The third part of the book's title, the physicist George Gamow, flits in and out of the story in the same way that he would appear at CalTech and then disappear. The book reminds me a bit of The Diary of Samuel Pepys, since we read where Watson went, with whom, and what they discussed. If you would like to read an insider story of the way that much of our current biology developed explosively in the 1950's, this story gives you a month by month diary. Jim Watson's candor makes it fascinating reading.
Rating: 4
Summary: A light-hearted reminiscense
Comment: Anyone expecting a stoic recollection of the works of a great scientist will find many such books available.This is not one of them. It is, however, a very real self-portait of a man in his latter years who, while being a great scientist, admits to not being a great 'everything'. It makes the legend human, just as the anecdotes about his peers makes them less stone gods of science, and more multi-dimensional people. 'Genes, Girls, and Gamow' is the kind of book you might hear orally from the author in his den in a comfortable leather chair.It is definitly not lab coat and sterile conditions reading. If you want a genetics text, BUY a genetics text. If you want a good example of how great insight in an art or science does not make one immune from the human condition, then give this book a read.
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Title: The Double Helix : A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James D. Watson ISBN: 074321630X Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 12 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: DNA: The Secret of Life by James D. Watson, Andrew Berry ISBN: 0375415467 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox ISBN: 0060184078 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: A Passion for DNA: Genes, Genomes, and Society by James D. Watson, Walter Gratzer ISBN: 0879696095 Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution by Victor K. McElheny ISBN: 0738203416 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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