Another Feynman biography? Yes, and why not: Feynman may just be the most idiosyncratic, brilliant scientist America has ever produced, a man who enjoyed stage managing his public persona. The Gribbins, veteran popular-science writers (Fire on Earth: Doomsday, Dinosaurs, and Humankind, 1996), fall short of outright hagiography, but they make it clear that Feynman was "no ordinary genius." The most original contribution in their take on Feynman's life is in conveying the shape of the physicist's mind: From boyhood on, he truly had to do it himself—go back to first principles and prove theorems or demonstrate physical laws to be entirely convinced of their truth. If experiment did not bear out theory, then theory was out. Especially intriguing were his visualizations of particle interactions. These mental pictures led to the famous Feynman diagrams that have eased the study of quantum mechanics for several generations of physics students. Feynman's Nobel Prize was for his work in quantum electrodynamics, that is, for formulations of the equations that explain all interactions between light and matter. For the cognoscenti, Feynman's formulation gives rise to the notion of electron self-interaction involving the creation of "virtual" photons; this was key, the Gribbins aver, to setting the stage for the revolutionary Big Bang theory of the creation of the universe. The book unfolds in a series of chapters interweaving a narrative of the life (boyhood, university, the marriages, Los Alamos, Cornell, Caltech, etc.) with the hard stuff—the Ph.D. thesis, the Nobel work, and beyond. Readers may be advised to follow Feynman's own advice to his sister: Read until you don't understand, and then go back and reread until you do. If that fails, there is still plenty of human interest, humor, and even acknowledgment of failings here (Feynman thought English and philosophy were "dippy"). Flaws, yes, but still a fine diamond of a life, well polished by the Gribbin team.
Pub Date: July 21, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-94124-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
Why sex? It's for repair, stupid. Michod (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology/Univ. of Arizona) says that sex is not for diversity in the gene pool (the conventional wisdom), but rather to repair genetic damage and rid the genome of unwanted mutations. Remember all that business you learned in biology about sexual division (meiosis), that complicated process by which chromosomes split various times, then come together at fertilization to produce an offspring with genes from all four grandparents? Well, that certainly makes for diversity, argues Michod, but it's secondary to keeping the gene lineage pure: That chromosome activity can repair damage. In defense of this provocative idea, the author reviews the course of evolution from asexual and sexual reproduction in single cells on to complex organisms, explaining the increasingly sophisticated means by which DNA replication is controlled and mistakes are corrected. Using mathematical models and examples drawn from nature he illustrates the high cost of sex (energy consumed in searching and wooing, chance of disease, etc.) to demonstrate that sex must be doing something vital. That something turns out to be preserving the genome. Shades of Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene, 1977): Sex is not for the pleasure of thee and me, it's just the genes' way not only of making other genes but of making sure those genes are clean. Michod attempts to clarify by way of diagrams and chapter notes that may challenge the general reader, as does his soaring last chapter, in which he argues for both the unity of life and the distinctiveness of species. No doubt many will respond that there must be more to sex than repair, and some will raise the issue of such phenomena as transduction in bacteria and viral infection as ways in which nature mixes genomes for better or worse. But Michod's ideas surely merits a hearing. Sure to spark a lively debate.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-201-40754-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
Some surprising answers to questions about why our bodies are designed the way they are and why we get the diseases we do. Nesse, a physician (Psychiatry/Univ. of Michigan) and Williams (Ecology and Evolution/SUNY, Stony Brook) first teamed up to write an article on Darwinian medicine, which applies the concept of adaptation by natural selection to medical questions. That article, published in 1991 in The Quarterly Review of Biology, has been expanded into the present book, in which the authors look at the design characteristics of the human body that make it susceptible to disease. Their conclusions? First, sometimes it's our genes that make us vulnerable to disease. Some genetic defects arise through mutations, but more often, genes with deleterious effects are maintained through natural selection because their benefits outweigh their costs. Second, there's a mismatch between our present environment and the one that over thousands of years shaped our hunter-gatherer ancestors. There simply hasn't been time for our bodies to adapt, and we suffer the consequences. Third, disease results from design compromises. For example, the structural changes that allowed us to develop from horizontal four-footed creatures to upright two-footed ones left us vulnerable to back problems. Fourth, our evolutionary history has left us some troublesome legacies, such as the unfortunate intersection in our throats of the passages for food and air. Some of the areas Nesse and Williams apply their Darwinian approach to are infectious diseases, allergies, cancer, aging, reproduction, and mental disorders. Happily, they write with impeccable clarity, and when they are speculating (which they do freely), they are careful to say so. They also offer numerous suggestions for research studies, thoughtful proposals for reshaping medical textbooks and medical education, and a scenario dramatizing Darwinian medicine's possible clinical application. Fascinating reading for doctors and patients alike.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8129-2224-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
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