The Scientist - Home

Humans are addicted to cherished principles, certainties that have been expensively acquired and should not be questioned. Science is in this respect extremely human—it is always relieved to feel that however large our ignorance there are some questions that appear to have been settled once and for all. Around these questions it tends to draw the wagons: anyone who insists on reopening them is eccentric, misguided if not anti-scientific. However, if we look at scientific history, the de

Editor's note: On October 2, 1987, the British immunologist Sir Peter Medawar died at a London hospital following a stroke. Among other achievements, Sir Peter shared the 1960 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine with Sir Macfarlane Burnet for their joint work on the theory of acquired immunological tolerance. The work led to tremendous advances in liver, heart and kidney transplants. He was also a noted author and philosopher of science (see THE SCIENTIST, November 17, 1986, p. 23, for a re

Curiosity about aging, stimulated by many long-lived relatives, motivated my research from the beginning. For many generations, some of them lived to age 90 or more. As a child I was intrigued by how differently people age, so that some retained mental clarity and memory into advanced old age while others began to fail 20 years earlier. Was this mostly hereditary, or also the result of nurtured expectations for high mental performance throughout life? Born in 1939 I thrilled to hear elderly r

Virologist Purnell W Choppin (pronounced "Sho-pan") took office September 1 as president of Howard Hughes Medical Institute at a time of great ferment. His predecessor, Donald S. Fredrickson, deported after a dispute involving controversial management and spending practices [see THE SCIENTIST, June 1, 1987, p. 2, and June 29, p. 1]. At the some time, as port of its agreement last spring with the Internal Revenue Service, HHMI has agreed to increase its financial awards, by on average of at leas

I have on occasion split the infinitive and one should never do that. Yet it’s hard to remember what is so bad about splitting infinitives, except that it offends those people who had their grammar belted into them and never dared to ask questions. You should certainly not ignore the rules of style in favor of expediency, but there are situations where only a split infinitive gives the right emphasis. "Write down key words or short sentences as they come to mind. "Arrange the keys in

KNOWING EVERYTHING ABOUT NOTHING Specialization and Change In Scientific Careers. John Ziman. Cambridge University Press, New York 1987. 196 pp. $29.95. The title of this book and the reputation of its author led me to hope for an insightful analysis of how the ever-increasing specialization of research has shaped modern science. What would 19th-century giants such as Helmholtz think of a scientific enterprise that generated half a million research papers per year, most of which are largely u

VOICE OF THE UNIVERSE Building the Jodrell Bank Telescope. Revised and updated edition. Bernard Lovell. Praeger Publishers. New York, 1987. 300 pp. $14.95 PS. The revised and updated version of Bernard Lovell’s 1968 book The Story of Jodrell Bank traces the growth of a true symbol of the modern space age—the radio astronomy observatory at the University of Manchester. It covers the early studies of meteor trails, development of the 250-foot radio telescope and its subsequent triu

THE FASEB JOURNAL Official Publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Vol. 1, nos.1, 2 and 3, Rockville, MD, 1987. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), in an apparent attempt to make a greater impact on biological science, has replaced its Federation Proceedings with The FASEB Journal. No longer limited to abstracts and programs of annual meetings and occasional symposia, the new journal is designed to be interdisciplinary,

Recent science and engineering graduates are entering a better job market than reports on two national surveys might indicate. A 25% percent decline in job offers to the class of 1987, reported by the College Placement Council, is in part the result of an 11 percent decline in the number of placement offices that participated in its 27th annual salary survey. Likewise, a 12 percent decline in job offers to the class of 1986, reported by the 1987 Northwestern Endicott-Lindquist survey of 230 U.

LONDON-Theres no shortage of obscure prose in the scientific literature, judging from entries to competition organized by The Veterinary Record, which recently announced the winner. He is Martin Gregory of Weybridge, England who submitted a sentence from G.W. Arnold and ML. Dudzinski’s book Ethology of FreeR anging Domestic Animals (ier, 1978) The authors wrote: “That the sense of smell used by these cattle was established because of the marked audible variation in inhalation inte

WHO’S WHO IN SCIENCE IN EUROPE A Biographical Guide in Science. Technology, Agriculture, and Medicine. Fifth edition. Longman Group Ltd.. Essex, UK, 1987. 3 vols. 2,880 pp. £395. Distributed in the United States and Canada by Gale Research Co., Detroit, MI. $695. Despite initial astonishment at finding distinguished Spanish biochemist and new UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor’s name omitted, and mild amusement on discovering that social scientists continue to be ignored

WHO GOT EINSTEIN’S OFFICE? Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study. Ed Regjs. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. 1987. 320 pp. $17.95. Since Albert Einstein’s sojourn there, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey has enjoyed a worldwide reputation as a preeminent think-tank. As the author, philosopher Ed Regis, puts it, the institute is a “Platonic Heaven” where esoteric thinkers can muse about the most abstract forms of the universe. H