The Strange Case Of The Spotted Mice: And Other Classic Essays on Science
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About this book
Sir Peter Medawar was not only a Nobel prize-winning immunologist but also a wonderful writer about science and scientists. Described by the Washington Post as a "genuinely brilliant popularizer" of science his essays are remarkable for their clarity and wit. This entertaining selection presents the very best of his writing with a new Foreword by Stephen Jay Gould one of his greatest admirers. The wide range of subjects include Howard Florey and penicillin J. B.S. Haldane whom he describes as a "with-knobs-on variant of us all " and in the title essay scientific fraud involving laboratory mice. There is Medawars defence of James Watson against the storm of criticism that greeted the publication of The Double Helix. A merciless debunker of myths he reveals the nonsense to be discovered in psychoanalytic interpretations of Darwins illness and launches devastating attacks on Arthur Koestler I.Q. psychologists and most notably Teilhard de Chardin. He raises questions about the nature of scientific endeavour-he famously defined science as the art of the soluble-and a common theme is his desire to communicate the importance of science to the widest possible audience.
