Avoid Boring People / and other lessons from a life in science

Watson, James D.

ISBN 10: 0192802739 / ISBN 13: 9780192802736

Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007

About this Item

Previous Owner has written his initials in blue ink -- "RM" or "RAM" -- to top of half-title page. This is NOT an author signature. How Mr. Watson came to pursue the structure of DNA. 347 pp. Reduced from $12.

Seller Inventory # 011707

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Avoid Boring People / and other lessons from a life in science
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192802739
• ISBN 13: 9780192802736
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • History of Science

About this title

Synopsis

`ames D. Watson looks back on his extraordinary and varied career -- from its beginnings as a schoolboy in Chicago's South Side to the day he left Harvard almost 50 years later, world-renowned as the co-discoverer of DNA -- and considers the lessons he has learnt along the way.

The result is both an engagingly eccentric memoir and an insightful compendium of lessons in life for aspiring scientists. Watson's 'manners' range from those he learnt bird-watching with his father during the Great Depression ('Avoid fighting bigger boys and dogs' and 'Find a young hero to emulate') to the manners appropriate for a Nobel Prize ('Have friends close to those who rule'). He evokes his time as a graduate student in the 1940s ('Hire spunky lab helpers'); the excitement of working in DNA for the first time as well as having his first dates; his time working as a White House advisor; and at Harvard in the '70s.

Avoid Boring People is a quirky, original, wise, and infuriatingly un-put-downable blend of candid anecdotes and revealing insights into the life of one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century.

About the Author

In 1953, while working at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helical structure of DNA. For their discovery they were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, with Maurice Wilkins. Watson was appointed to the faculty at Harvard University in 1956. In 1968, while retaining his position at Harvard, he became director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). In 1988 he was appointed as associate director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) to help launch the Human Genome Program. A year later he became the first director of the National Center for Human Genome Research at the NIH. Watson was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1997, and is today Chancellor of CSHL.