Time, Love, Memory; A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior
Dickson Sorensen (Author photograph), Geoff Spear New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. First Edition [stated] [No price on DJ--may be book club edition]. Hardcover. [12], 300, [8] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Jonathan Weiner (born November 26, 1953) is an American writer of non-fiction books based on his biological observations, focusing particularly on evolution in the Galápagos Islands, genetics, and the environment. In 1976, he graduated from Harvard University. Weiner is the Maxwell M. Geffen Professor of Medical and Scientific Journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches writing about science and medicine. His book Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality, is a look at the scientific search for the Fountain of Youth. He won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the 1994 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science for his book The Beak of the Finch. In 1999 he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize in 2000 for his book Time, Love, Memory about Seymour Benzer. From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Beak of the Finch, the riveting story of a biologist's search for the foundations of behavior. Looking over the shoulder of some of the premier scientists in the filed, Jonathan Weiner takes us into their laboratories to show us how pieces of DNA actually shape behavior. He focuses on the work of Seymour Benzer, who, decades ago, with James Watson and Francis Crick, helped to crack the genetic code. Then, in a simple experiment using a few test tubes, a light bulb, and 100 fruit flies, Benzer invented the genetic dissection of behavior. Now we see how he and his students find and study genes that build our inner clocks, genes that shape the way we love, and genes that decide what we can (or cannot) remember. These breakthroughs help explain secrets of human behavior and may lead to advance treatments for behavioral disorders ranging from rage to autism to schizophrenia. In a narrative that sweeps from the first years of the century to the present, Weiner makes the process of scientific discovery and understanding almost tangible on the page. Time, Love, Memory is a brilliant work of scientific reportage. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: DNA, Human behavior, Seymour Benzer, Genetics, Cloning, Drosophila, Francis Crick, Gene Mapping, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Molecular Biology, Alfred Sturtevant, James Watson
ISBN: 0679444351
[Book #85109]
Price: $27.50