What a Time I Am Having: Selected Letters of Max Perutz - Hardcover

Max F. Perutz; Vivien Perutz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879698640 ISBN 13: 9780879698645

Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Press, 2009

Synopsis

Selected by his daughter, Vivien, from Max Perutz s voluminous correspondence, the letters reproduced here portray their author with a spontaneity and directness no autobiography could have matched. They chronicle Perutz s adventurous life through his own vivid, erudite and humorous pen, documenting the hopes, roadblocks and moments of elation of his sixty-year quest to understand the molecular biology of hemoglobin. The first great step in this quest unraveling the molecular structure of hemoglobin earned Perutz the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Narrated against a backdrop of family and friends, politics and war, literature, travels, and Max s beloved mountains, these letters provide rare insight into the thoughts of a remarkable and very human scientist, and delightful sketches of some of the people he encountered. Starting with lively letters to a girlfriend written in his youth in Vienna and the impressions of a young scientist in Cambridge, the letters progress to the desperate pleas of an enemy alien interned in Canada during World War II. The diary of Perutz s subsequent super-secret war work for the British to build a floating ice airstrip in the North Atlantic, ardent campaigning letters to scientists and politicians, and self-deprecating stories of his own mishaps written to amuse his children and grandchildren are some of the many highlights of these fascinating letters, unique in the annals of recent scientific history. This book is a companion to Georgina Ferry s Max Perutz and the Secret of Life. Together these volumes provide a portrait of an extraordinary character in the development of molecular biology. Contents: Preface Timeline Cast of characters List of illustrations Memoir of Max Perutz by David Blow Letters: 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s Subject index

About this title

Product Description

What a Time I am Having Selected by his daughter, Vivien, from Max Perutz's voluminous correspondence, the letters reproduced here portray their author with a spontaneity and directness no autobiography could have matched. Full description

Edition details

• Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0879698640
• ISBN 13: 9780879698645
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Vivien Perutz