Recommended Books
from Jack Szostak

Book List Life's Devices Steven Vogel Radioactive Substances Marie Curie On the Shoulders of Giants Robert K. Merton

Background Jack Szostak received the Lasker Award (2006) for his role in the discovery of telomerase, an enzyme that protects the ends of chromosomes from fraying. In his laboratory at Harvard University and the Massachusetts General Hospital, Szostak investigates how large molecules essential to life—such as DNA and proteins—originated and evolved early in Earth's history. Essay Life's Devices, by Steven Vogel, is a wonderful book that explains in clear and direct terms how simple physical forces influence the behavior, growth, and evolution of plants and animals. Vogel uses many beautiful and incredibly diverse examples to illustrate the subtle interrelationships of living entities with their physical environment. This book has inspired me to search for simple but unappreciated or unrecognized physical phenomena that can help to explain the origin of life. The brief work, Radioactive Substances, by Marie Curie, is a translation of a thesis submitted by Marie Curie to the French Academy of Sciences. It is a summary of her work on the isolation and characterization of radium and its radioactivity. I read this when I was just starting my own lab, and I was very, very strongly impressed with her simple, clear and direct presentation of a series of experiments that opened up a whole new field of science. It is a great source of inspiration for anyone starting out in science. On the Shoulders of Giants, by Robert K. Merton, is affectionately abbreviated as OTSOG. It is quite different from the two above. Among the many lessons of this book is that there is always more history to history: just when you think you have the last word to be said on a subject, you turn the corner and see a new world. Beginning with Newton's famous aphorism, the book ranges over much of history and culture in search of the origin of the famous phrase.