What is life? : five great ideas in biology /
The renowned Nobel Prize-winning scientist's elegant and concise explanation of the fundamental ideas in biology and their uses today. Hailed by Philip Pullman as "a great communicator" who is also "as distinguished a scientist as there could be," Paul Nurse writes with deli...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
W.W. Norton & Company,
[2021]
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| Edition: | First American edition. |
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| Summary: | The renowned Nobel Prize-winning scientist's elegant and concise explanation of the fundamental ideas in biology and their uses today. Hailed by Philip Pullman as "a great communicator" who is also "as distinguished a scientist as there could be," Paul Nurse writes with delight at life's richness and a sense of the urgent role of biology in our time. With What Is Life? he delivers a brief but powerful work of popular science in the vein of Carlo Rovelli's Seven Brief Lessons in Physics. Nurse takes readers on a wondrous journey through five fundamental biological ideas, the cell, the gene, evolution by natural selection, life as chemistry and life as information, introducing the scientists who made the most important advances and taking us into his own lab to give us a sense of the thrill of scientific discovery. In a final chapter, Nurse addresses biology's most pressing ethical issues (including gene-editing, genetic testing and genetically modified crops), and he concludes with a stirring encomium to biology's role in tackling infectious disease. |
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| Physical Description: | 145 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780393541151 0393541150 |