Radium and the Secret of Life
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.87 (958 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 022623827X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-01-20 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Handling his subject with care, and exploiting its unique properties at every turn, Campos demonstrates radium's capacity to reveal the secrets of science and history alike.". "By writing the story of radium back into the history of early genetics, Campos upends some of its standard tales
A readable and lively cutting edge tour-de-force in the history azira A readable and lively cutting edge tour-de-force in the history of biology. Campos reveals how radium shaped views on the origin and processes of life, but also how biological thought and practice simultaneously reshaped the understanding of radium and radioactivity. Metaphors s. Amazon Customer said Five Stars. Extraordinary. M. Heiss said Dull. How can this book be this boring?The topic is fascinating. Luis A. Campos dwells in the Heart of Nuke - New Mexico. Surrounded by interesting nuclear projects and scientists, he only had to reach out his hand to grab exciting information and compelling anecdotes from all around
From the creation of half-living microbes in the test tube to charting the earliest histories of genetic engineering, Radium and the Secret of Life highlights previously unknown interconnections between the history of the early radioactive sciences and the sciences of heredity. Radium and the Secret of Life recovers a forgotten history of the connections between radioactivity and the life sciences that existed long before the dawn of molecular biology.. Physicists and chemists early on described the wondrous new element in lifelike terms such as “decay” and “half-life,” and made frequent references to the “natural selection” and “evolution” of the elements. Equating the transmutation of radium with the biological transmutation of living species, biologists saw in metabolism and mutation properties that reminded them of the new element. Before the hydrogen bomb indelibly associated radioactivity with death, many chemists, physicians, botanists, and geneticists believed that radium might hold the secret to life. Meanwhile, biologists of the period used radium in experiments aimed at elucidating some of the most basic phenomena of life, including metabolism and mutation. These initially provocative metaphoric links between radium and life prov