Description
In a collection of incisive essays, twenty-seven of the world's leading scientists--including Robert Sapolsky, Lee Smolin, Mary Catherine Bateson, Janna Levin, Nicholas Humphrey, Freeman Dyson, and others--reflect on the key moments, experiences, and events in their childhoods that first set them on the course of pursuing a scientific career. Reprint. 20,000 f irst printing.
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What makes a child decide to become a scientist?•For Robert Sapolsky–Stanford professor of biology–it was an argument with a rabbi over a passage in the Bible.•Physicist Lee Smolin traces his inspiration to a volume of Einstein’s work, picked up as a diversion from heartbreak.•Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist and the author of Flow, found his calling through Descartes.Murray Gell-Mann, Nicholas Humphrey, Freeman Dyson . . . 27 scientists in all write about what it was that sent them on the path to their life's work. Illuminating memoir meets superb science writing in stories that invite us to consider what it is–and what it isn’t–that sets the scientific mind apart.
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