This is my first book for this year. The author is my favourite, I have read all his previous 3 books ; The Emperor of All Maladies : A Biography of Cancer (won Pullitzer Prize in 2011), The Gene : An Intimate History and The Laws of Medicine. Dr Sid Mukherjee is a cancer physician, researcher and assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Centre.
Reading this book is like reading a biology textbook but with more compelling storytelling and thrilling history. I have a better understanding of cell cycle and stem cell therapy after reading this book. This book also shares the latest technology and research on cell engineering.
According to him, there are two broad kinds of problems in science.
“The first kind-call it the ‘eye in the sandstorm’ problem - arises when there’s such immense confusion in a field that no pattern or road map is visible. There’s sand in the air everywhere you look, and a completely new pathway of thinking is needed. Quantum theory serves as a good example. In the early 1900s, as the atomic and subatomic worlds were discovered, the heuristic principles of Newtonian physics just would not suffice, and a shifted paradigm about this atomic/subatomic world was required to get out of the sandstorm.
The second is its converse: call it the ‘sand in the eye’ problem.
Everything makes perfect sense, except one ugly fact that just won’t fit the beautiful theory. It irritates the scientist like a sand grain lodged in the eye - why, why, she asks herself, won’t this one irritating contradictory fact go away?”
Being a physician, a cancer researcher and a Pullitzer Prize winner author surely is a dream come true for any doctors.
Comments
Post a Comment