Lives of a Biologist: Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science

by John Tyler Bonner

Overview

Beginning with the discovery of genes on chromosomes and culminating with the unmasking of the most minute genetic mysteries, the twentieth century saw astounding and unprecedented progress in the science of biology. In an illustrious career that spanned most of the century, biologist John Bonner witnessed many of these advances firsthand. Part autobiography, part history of the extraordinary transformation of biology in his time, Bonner’s book is truly a life in science, the story of what it is to be a biologist observing the unfolding of the intricacies of life itself.

Bonner’s scientific interests are nearly as varied as the concerns of biology, ranging from animal culture to evolution, from life cycles to the development of slime molds. And the extraordinary cast of characters he introduces is equally diverse, among them Julian Huxley, J. B. S. Haldane, Leon Trotsky, and Evelyn Waugh. Writing with a charm and freshness that bring the most subtle nuances of science to life, he pursues these interests through the hundred years that gave us the discovery of embryonic induction; the interpretation of evolution in terms of changes in gene frequency in a population; growth in understanding of the biochemistry of the cell; the beginning of molecular genetics; remarkable insights into animal behavior; the emergence of sociobiology; and the simplification of ecological and evolutionary principles by means of mathematical models. In this panoramic view, we see both the sweep of world events and scientific progress and the animating details, the personal observations and experiences, of a career conducted in their midst.

In Bonner’s view, biology is essentially the study of life cycles. His book, marking the cycles of a life in biology, is a fitting reflection of this study, with its infinite, and infinitesimal, permutations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674028487
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	230
File size:	258 KB

About the Author

John Tyler Bonner is Professor of Biology, Emeritus, Princeton University. He is the author of many books, including Morphogenesis.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS Preface 1. The World of My Elders: 1900–1920 2. Becoming a Biologist: 1920–1940 3. Everything Peaks: 1940–1960 4. Revolution and Progress: 1960–1980 5. Coming Together: 1980–2000 Index

What People are Saying About This

Evelyn Fox Keller

A gracious and immensely enjoyable memoir from an era in which scientists could still be gentlemen. Bonner's generosity of spirit shines through on almost every page.
— Evelyn Fox Keller, MIT

This is a delightful memoir by one of the most charming and well-spoken biologists on the planet. John Tyler Bonner's career now spans half a dozen scientific generations, from each of which he has gathered friends and wisdom. In looking back, he illuminates both the story of his life and the story of life.

Anne Firor Scott

Surely there can be few scientists with the breadth of knowledge, the puckish wit and the all-round modest good humor that John Bonner displays in this splendid memoir. Long may he write!
— Anne Firor Scott, W.K. Boyd Professor of History emerita, Duke University

Frans de Waal

A charming, personal account of the ascendance of the life sciences to their current dominance by someone who has been there. Few biologists grasp their discipline at as many levels as John Tyler Bonner does, and even fewer can claim as many firsthand encounters with the greats of the past century. The result is an autobiography that is both delightful and informative.
— Frans de Waal, Living Links Center at Emory University

Mary Jane West-Eberhard Smithsonian Tropical Resea Institute

Imagine a wonderful writer who just keeps writing book after book and just keeps getting more and more readable with each one. That's John Bonner. Now he's done a memoir full of magic names from the past, where his kind humor softens a keen eye for human antics including his own. If you like biology, biography, and history of science and don't mind having fun reading it, then this book is for you. I would get two, one to keep and one to loan."

Jonathan Weiner

This is a delightful memoir by one of the most charming and well-spoken biologists on the planet. John Tyler Bonner's career now spans half a dozen scientific generations, from each of which he has gathered friends and wisdom. In looking back, he illuminates both the story of his life and the story of life.
— Jonathan Weiner, author of The Beak of the Finch and Time, Love, and Memory

Editorial Reviews

This charming and unduly modest book is part memoir, part distillation of 20th-century biology, as told by an eminent researcher, writer and teacher who witnessed much of it firsthand. Bonner (Morphology), a former Princeton University developmental biologist and lifelong devotee of cellular slime molds, invokes life cycles and development, his specialties, to talk about the last century!s gigantic steps forward in biology. He covers advances in biochemistry, population genetics and embryology; the discovery of DNA structure; and the human genome project. Against this parade of discoveries, Bonner considers his own career, which included studying everything from animal social behavior to evolution. (May) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

A charming memoir combining autobiography and a 20th-century history of biology. "A gentleman and a scholar" aptly describes Bonner (Biology Emeritus/Princeton; Life Cycles, 1993, etc.). Born in 1920, he describes growing up in fine style in New York, Paris, and London. His parents moved in literary circles that included the likes of Alexander Woollcott and Rebecca West; late in life, Pa became a bestselling novelist. Early on, Bonner was smitten by nature: first birds and then, after reading H.G. Wells's The Science of Life, by all living things. He also credits the teachers who inspired him at Harvard and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Intrigued by how a fertilized cell develops into a complex organism, Bonner got turned on to the study of cellular slime molds as a model organism after reading a Ph.D. thesis he picked up by chance. The mold's lifecycle begins with individual amoebae that (1) eat bacteria until there are no more, then (2) stream together to form a multi-cellular slug-like organism that (3) migrates (secreting all that slime), (4) stops and turns upright, developing a stalk that (5) becomes topped by a fruiting body, which will disperse spores to start the cycle all over again. Myriad questions of how and why would occupy Bonner, aided and abetted by the increasingly sophisticated tools of genetics and molecular biology, for the rest of his career. As he tracks it, he charts the transformation of biology in 20-year spurts, from the rediscovery of Mendel at the turn of the 20th century through population genetics, Watson-Crick, sociobiology, and the genome fallout today. He considers the overarching theme of biology to be lifecycles,embellished by ideas about size, division of labor, and complexity as driving forces of evolution. Bonner's own lifecycle makes for pleasant reading and inspires a new respect for slime molds.

Kirkus Reviews

Bonner has devoted much of his imaginative and creative biological research of the intervening years to cellular slime molds, which lead fascinating and, before Bonner’s work, previously largely unexplained lives. His accounts of his and his graduate students’ thinking and experiments convey much of the scientific approach to problems lucidly, and those of his travels, his vacations in Nova Scotia over the course of 40 years, and the many amusing and illuminating incidents in his life reflect a refreshing open-mindedness. This is one scientist’s autobiography that manages to be simultaneously delightful and strikingly informative.

Booklist - William Beatty

Here is a man of prodigious scientific talent, who emerges in Lives of a Biologist as the best kind of scientist—a man fascinated by the things he is investigating, and finding great joy in them… This is a life well and fulfillingly lived, told with warmth and humor.

John R. G. Turner

A charming, personal account of the ascendance of the life sciences to their current dominance by someone who has been there. Few biologists grasp their discipline at as many levels as John Tyler Bonner does, and even fewer can claim as many firsthand encounters with the greats of the past century. The result is an autobiography that is both delightful and informative.

Frans de Waal

Surely there can be few scientists with the breadth of knowledge, the puckish wit, and the all-round modest good humor that John Bonner displays in this splendid memoir. Long may he write!

Anne Firor Scott

John Tyler Bonner had the luck to be born into a family that lived a charmed life, the fortune to find a lifelong passion and the timing to live at the heyday of his favorite subject. In his autobiography, Lives of a Biologist: Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science, Bonner…smoothly integrates advances in biology during the 20th century with tales from a life that now stretches into its ninth decade. In simple but elegant prose, he revisits some of the most important biological advances, from embryology to molecular genetics.

Sally Squires

A gracious and immensely enjoyable memoir from an era in which scientists could still be gentlemen. Bonner’s generosity of spirit shines through on almost every page.

Evelyn Fox Keller

[A] gracefully written memoir… Bonner, who began his career as an embryologist, provides many insights regarding the changing fashions he and others have observed in the field of developmental biology.

Choice - K. B. Sterling

Imagine a wonderful writer who just keeps writing book after book and just keeps getting more and more readable with each one. That’s John Bonner. Now he’s done a memoir full of magic names from the past, where his kind humor softens a keen eye for human antics including his own. If you like biology, biography, and history of science and don’t mind having fun reading it, then this book is for you. I would get two, one to keep and one to loan.

Mary Jane West-Eberhard

This memoir by the great celebrant of slime moulds offers a fascinating overview of a century of biology. Bonner tells of changes in biological thinking, and his own pervasive influence in the study of life cycles and morphogenesis.

New Scientist

This is a delightful memoir by one of the most charming and well-spoken biologists on the planet. John Tyler Bonner’s career now spans half a dozen scientific generations, from each of which he has gathered friends and wisdom. In looking back, he illuminates both the story of his life and the story of life.

Jonathan Weiner

This memoir by the great celebrant of slime moulds offers a fascinating overview of a century of biology. Bonner tells of changes in biological thinking, and his own pervasive influence in the study of life cycles and morphogenesis.

New Scientist

Imagine a wonderful writer who just keeps writing book after book and just keeps getting more and more readable with each one. That's John Bonner. Now he's done a memoir full of magic names from the past, where his kind humor softens a keen eye for human antics including his own. If you like biology, biography, and history of science and don't mind having fun reading it, then this book is for you. I would get two, one to keep and one to loan."

Mary Jane West-Eberhard Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

A charming, personal account of the ascendance of the life sciences to their current dominance by someone who has been there. Few biologists grasp their discipline at as many levels as John Tyler Bonner does, and even fewer can claim as many firsthand encounters with the greats of the past century. The result is an autobiography that is both delightful and informative.

Frans De Waal

[A] gracefully written memoir...Bonner, who began his career as an embryologist, provides many insights regarding the changing fashions he and others have observed in the field of developmental biology.
— K. B. Sterling

Choice

Here is a man of prodigious scientific talent, who emerges in Lives of a Biologist as the best kind of scientist—a man fascinated by the things he is investigating, and finding great joy in them...This is a life well and fulfillingly lived, told with warmth and humor.
— John R. G. Turner

New York Times Book Review

John Tyler Bonner had the luck to be born into a family that lived a charmed life, the fortune to find a lifelong passion and the timing to live at the heyday of his favorite subject. In his autobiography, The Lives of a Biologist: Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science, Bonner...smoothly integrates advances in biology during the 20th century with tales from a life that now stretches into its ninth decade. In simple but elegant prose, he revisits some of the most important biological advances, from embryology to molecular genetics.
— Sally Squires

Washington Post

Bonner has devoted much of his imaginative and creative biological research of the intervening years to cellular slime molds, which lead fascinating and, before Bonner's work, previously largely unexplained lives. His accounts of his and his graduate students' thinking and experiments convey much of the scientific approach to problems lucidly, and those of his travels, his vacations in Nova Scotia over the course of 40 years, and the many amusing and illuminating incidents in his life reflect a refreshing open–mindedness. This is one scientist's autobiography that manages to be simultaneously delightful and strikingly informative.
— William Beatty

Booklist