Avoid boring people : lessons from a life in science
"James D. Watson looks back on his remarkable scientific career from his school days to the day he left Harvard almost thirty-five years later, celebrated worldwide as co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. The result is an engaging memoir full of candid observations of the world of science, neatly distilled into amusing and inspiring lessons at the end of each chapter. The book is, in Watson's own words, 'an object lesson, if not quite an exemplary history of the making of a scientist'." "Watsons remembered lessons range from those he learnt growing up on Chicago's South Side during the Great Depression ('Avoid fighting bigger boys or dogs') to the manners appropriate for a Nobel Prizewinner ('Buy, don't rent, a suit of tails'). He evokes university life as a young researcher in the 1940s ('Hire spunky lab helpers'); the excitement of getting close to the mystery of DNA for the first time ('Choose an objective apparently ahead of its time'); and political wrangles of both the Harvard and White House variety." "Avoid Boring People is an original and infuriatingly un-put-downable narrative of the scientific life, peppered with anecdote and insight; an intriguing personal account by one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century."-- Jacket
Print Book, English, 2007
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007