Chance and Design: Reminiscences of Science in Peace and War - Hardcover

Hodgkin, Alan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521400996 ISBN 13: 9780521400992

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1992

Synopsis

Alan Hodgkin believes that - contrary to popular conviction - chance plays quite as large a role as design in scientific discovery. This engaging autobiography charts the balance of the two in his own life. Beginning starts with an account of his childhood in an extended Quaker family. Not a great success at school, he nevertheless won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, and he writes informatively of the climate of university opinion in the thirties when he was an undergraduate and came to abandon the pacifist ideals of his upbringing. A chance observation on frog nerve led to a Trinity Fellowship and a year at the Rockefeller Institute in New York (where he met his future wife), to the Nobel Prize in 1963, and ultimately to the Presidency of the Royal Society. His experiments on nerve conduction seemed almost at the point of success when everything had to be abandoned on the outbreak of war in 1939, and for six years Hodgkin worked on the concept and design of airborne radar, described in the central section of the book as Flight Trials and Tribulations. The account of his return to civilian life and the resumption of experimentation includes two chapters of solid detail of Starting Again - for this is a book for any reader interested in the origin and development of a dedicated scientist.

About this title

Review

'Hodgkin comes across in this enjoyable book as a genial and humane scientist passionately devoted to his research for its own sake both before and after being awarded his Nobel prize.' M. F. Perutz, Nature

'A masterly exposition of his life's work.' Sir Bernard Katz, New Scientist

Book Description

In this autobiography, the scientist Alan Hodgkin, charts the balance of chance and design in his own life. A chance observation on a frog nerve led him to a Trinity Fellowship in Cambridge and a year at the Rockerfeller Institute in New York, to the Nobel Prize in 1963, and ultimately to Presidency of the Royal Society.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521400996
• ISBN 13: 9780521400992
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 424