Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior

by Jonathan Weiner

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Beak of the Finch, the riveting story of a biologist's search for the foundations of behavior.

Looking over the shoulder of some of the premier scientists in the filed, Jonathan Weiner takes us into their laboratories to show us how pieces of DNA actually shape behavior. He focuses on the work of Seymour Benzer, who, decades ago, with James Watson and Francis Crick, helped to crack the genetic code. Then, in a simple experiment using a few test tubes, a light bulb, and 100 fruit flies, Benzer invented the genetic dissection of behavior. Now we see how he and his students find and study genes that build our inner clocks, genes that shape the way we love, and genes that decide what we can (or cannot) remember. These breakthroughs help explain secrets of human behavior and may lead to advance treatments for behavioral disorders ranging from rage to autism to schizophrenia.

In a narrative that sweeps from the first years of the century to the present, Weiner makes the process of scientific discovery and understanding almost tangible on the page. Time, Love, Memory is a brilliant work of scientific reportage.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Biology, Biography, History, Neuroscience, Genetics

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 20, 1999

About the author

Jonathan Weiner is one of the most distinguished popular-science writers in the country. His books have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A former editor at The Sciences and a writer for The New Yorker, he is the author of The Beak of the Finch, Time, Love, Memory, His Brother's Keeper among many others.

He currently lives in New York with his wife, Deborah Heiligman who is the children's book author, and their two sons. There he teaches science writing at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Reviews

[KatieMc · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens when you put lots of drunk male fruit flies together in a bottle. Gay fruit fly sex, of course! Enjoyable, well written, thought provoking with many details that I will probably forget.

This history of behavioral genetics is primarily presented as professional biography Seymour Benzer, a scientist who rejected the more lucrative field of solid state electronics to study the behavior of fruit flies. Benzer comes off as a part quirky professor, part inventive genius, and truly driven by the love (?, is that right) of his chosen field. The title comes from reducing behavioral genetics into three essential components - time, love and memory.

Time - we learn how the notion of clocks are built into our DNA
Love - more like mating patterns, but ok.
Memory - not just memory, but the ability to learn and change behavior because of it

Behavior is complex and understanding it is difficult. There is quite a bit written about the experimental approaches used and how behavior was broken down. Aside from the science, you learn some charming quirks that brings back memories of reading The Double Helix in high school (man those guys played a lot of tennis!). There are many featured players, including Watson and Crick of DNA structure fame.

Most important, it dances around the question of nature versus nurture. No conclusions are given, and as this was written 15 years ago, if any were they would probably be OBE by now.

[Bastian Greshake Tzovaras · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book quotes Sydney Brenner with 'I hold the somewhat weaker view that history does exist for the young, but is divided into two epochs: the past two years, and everything that went before' and I'm somewhat guilty of that, as I've never heard of Seymour Benzer before reading this book, even though I always thought to be somewhat interested in science history.

Which having missed that out really is a shame. Benzer was a physicist-turned-molecular biologist-turned-behavioral geneticist and has ties to Feynman, Crick, Sturtevant (of fame for working with TH Morgan) and Delbrück, to just name a few. He did some groundbreaking work on bacteriophages while roaming the molecular biology field, before moving into (and somewhat founding) the field of behavioral genetics, where he worked on mating behavior, circadian rhythms and learning abilities with fruit flies.

The book does a nice job of embedding Benzer into the greater context, along with the household names of the fields and how his work relates to it. So yes, you will read about Darwin, Mendel, Morgan, Watson/Crick et al. But in a way that illuminates the work of Benzer, which worked great for me. And of course you also will get the nature vs nurture debate, which probably isn't too surprising if you deal with behavioral genetics. That's another point where the book shows it age. It was published in a time where (at least based on my perception) the debate was pretty heavily on the nature-side of things, with people looking for "genes for X" even more than they do today. I would take those parts with a grain of salt.

Recommended for: anyone with at least a minimal interest in the history of science, people who love great scientific debates (if you're by now bored by "adaptionist vs neutralist evolution" and "inclusive fitness vs group selection" give this a try!)

[Shweta Ramdas · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a young geneticist, it's easy to forget how young our field is. While social scientists still cite primarily Freud, most of the pioneers whose work we think about are from the 20th century (what better testament could there be to the fast pace of genetics that a lot of paradigms the book holds true are now considered passe). This book is a narrative of their work, and the astonishing leaps genetics and molecular biology has made in the last century and a half, all through the prism of work done on the humble fruit fly: Drosophila.

We start with Thoman Morgan's attempts to "map" genes on chromosomes, move on to those inspired by him: the physicist-turned-biologist Seymour Benzer who used bacteria-eating viruses to further refine these maps, his colleagues at Caltech, messrs Watson and Crick of double helix fame, and then to 2017 Nobel Laureates Jeff Hal & Michael Rosbach, whose work threw light upon circadian clocks, again in the fruit fly. Benzer, though, is the hero of the book, the connecting dot through all the different threads of work described. He's also a scientist of another time: choosing to switch to more 'interesting' questions every time it becomes too easy to answer a question. Too boring to publish too many papers on the same things!

This book manages to be clear while being accurate and having enough detail to please even a geneticist, and really gives us a sense of the state of genetics before it exploded and the tools became so easy to use everyone was using them.

This is a marvelous book. Highly recommended.

[Maggie C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Keeping my nonfiction (and review-writing lol) kick going… If you don’t study fruit fly brains for a living like I do, you might never think about picking this book up, but this is your sign that you should!! And if you are a Drosophilist it’s absolutely required reading. As I was reading I kept flip flopping between wishing I’d read it at the beginning of my PhD and being glad I saved it for now. I’m at a stage in my PhD where science can often feel like kind of a burned-out drag, and this book offered me a lot of inspiration and a really nice moment to zoom out and remind myself about the exciting history that informs the work I do every day. This book is semi-science, semi-biography, semi-history but all around well-written, funny, engaging, and does a fantastic job simplifying complex scientific ideas. I think it would be accessible to any reader, even if you’ve never heard of Drosophila, Seymour Benzer, or thought much about genetic control of behavior before! If you’re at all interested in biology and the people who do research, especially the (very recent) history of genetics, give it a go.

This book was really meaningful to me personally - I don’t think I’ve ever underlined as much in a book as I did this one! Even though it’s now somewhat dated (published in 2000, which is looooong ago in the world of genetics) there’s so much good stuff there and it was a real treat to read!

[Mladen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't finish it. Well-written but not my cup of tea.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I purchased Time, Love, Memory based on my fondness for Jonathan Weiner's Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Beak of the Finch. Like that book, Time, Love, Memory explores an important scientific theme through the lives and experiments of notable scientists. As a Brandeis alum, I especially enjoyed the portions of the book about Brandeis professors Jeff Hall and Michael Rosbash, but each scientist mentioned gets some character study as well as a description of his or her work.

The book is a brief history of genetics, beginning with Gregor Mendel's pea plants and working up to the genetics of complex human behavior. Along the way we meet plenty of scientists, and Weiner portrays them as endearingly devoted to their work. When young Sturtevant stays up all night mapping the fruit fly chromosome at the age of 19 and gets hooked on genetics, I want to cheer for him. Enthralled by science and devoted to his mentor, Sturtevant stays with the same lab for the rest of his career. Nowadays such a practice would be considered too "incestuous" for any respectable scientist, but it warmed my heart as if over a bunsen burner to read about it.

I really liked learning about Seymour Benzer's elegant experiments in fly behavior. With a simple device designed to track which flies move toward light and which stay in the darkness, he developed the first high-throughput behavioral screen. Others in his group went on to also become pioneers in genetics. A scientific family tree spreads its branches through Time, Love, Memory, and through it we see how a strong mentor can leave a mark on many other scientists.

Weiner's prose is engaging and his personalization of something as unusual as Drosophila research draws even non-scientist readers into the plot. I enjoyed the book and even as an occasional genetics researcher I was able to learn from it. Time, Love, Memory is worth your time. I don't know if you'll love it, but you will remember it.

[Catina Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know much about genetic research, beyond what I learned in high school - but I LOVED this book. It read like the drama of the "Pirates of Silicon Valley," but with molecular biologists, who would create the field of genetic research.

The drama, the break throughs, and the discovery of our behaviors being embedded in our genetic code, are mesmerizing. Weiner handles these geniuses with care, helping us to relate to an impossibly complex subject for the layman. Funny, poignant, educational - and important. Molecular science discoveries are going to force us to ask the hard questions about morality.

[Helia Naderi · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Every individual is so distinctive that racism is intellectually bankrupt.”

Page 178

[Hirsch’s manifesto in 1963: Behavior, Genetics, and Individuality Understood]

[Pat Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not since the Age of Enlightenment had the world seen such a crew of intellectual cutthroats, divinely assured of their rights of succession and their place in history. The philosophes of the Enlightenment also had their share of tall, thin, prognathous young men, and many of their contemporaries found them (in the words of Horace Walpole) “solemn, arrogant, dictatorial coxcombs—I need not say superlatively disagreeable.”

This book is the tale of the “intellectual cutthroats” who tracked down the mechanism of Mendelian inheritance, DNA. From Watson and Crick (whose names are famously linked to the discovery of the molecule's structure) to Brooklyn-born Seymour Benzer (whose name is virtually unknown, even in scientific circles outside DNA research), Weiner has put together a brilliant presentation of the unfolding of a new science.

After the eureka of Watson and Crick, one of the challenges for the new science (which did not yet call itself molecular biology) was to connect these classical maps of the gene with the new model of the double helix. It was Benzer who thought of a way to do it. Not long after Watson and Crick announced their discovery, Benzer hit on a plan that might unite the old revolution and the new revolution: classical genetics and molecular biology.

Weiner’s “cast of characters” reads like a Who’s Who of 20th century iconoclastic science: Richard Feynman, Max Delbrück, E.O. Wilson, geneticists Watson and Crick and Ronald Konopka, and the “Fly Room” scientists T.H. Morgan (whose name was given to the chromosome map unit “centimorgan”), Alfred Sturtevant and Ed Lewis. At the center of the tale, though, is Seymour Benzer, an innovative thinker who took the inheritance paradigm one step further, asking, can behavior be inherited?

With the discovery of the clock gene, the sense of time, mysterious for so many centuries, was no longer a mystery that could be observed only from the outside. Now it could be explored as a mechanism from the inside. This discovery implied that behavior itself could now be charted and mapped as precisely as any other aspect of inheritance. Qualities that people had always thought of… as if they were supernatural, might be mapped right alongside qualities as mundane as eye pigment.

Benzer’s band of “cutthroat intellectuals” would have to battle for the new paradigm, both within the scientific community and outside it. Weiner’s book is, therefore a war story; but one in which the victories are celebrated by all combatants, and coups are bloodless.

For anyone interested in behavioral science, genetics, or the concept of paradigm change, it is a fascinating read.

Liner Note:
I was surprised that the ground-breaking crystallography of Rosalind Franklin, whose photographs of the helical structure supplied the data that Watson and Crick used to achieve their leap of insight, was scarcely mentioned. Of course, since Franklin died before the Nobel was awarded, she was not a recipient. And like Benzer, she might have been forgotten, aside from DNA researchers, had it not been for an amazing BBC Life Story episode usually referred to as The Race for the Double Helix. The movie, which gives full weight to Franklin's contribution, was only released on VHS, and is largely unavailable now.

[Dzmitry Kishylau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great description of a long way that molecular biology has come over a relatively short period of time. Even if you're not interested in genetics and atomic theory of behavior per se, it's still a fascinating read about experiment design - how to learn something from such inherently messy and non-deterministic thing like fly behavior. My only complaint about the book is the "non-linear" narrative where author jumps back and forth between decades, problems and scientists. It's also trying to be really metaphorical, often to no particular benefit.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonathan Weiner is a god-send to science idiots like me: He's a talented journalist who can take a complex scientific (in this case biological) subject and make it (a) comprehensible, and (b) gripping. His other books include "The Beak of the Finch" (focuses on the Galapagos Islands and evolutionary studies) and "His Brother's Keeper" (story of two brothers, one who develops ALS and the other who single-mindedly focuses on attempts to find a cure).

"Time, Love, Memory" relates the history, largely occurring in the 20th C. and continuing, of the development of and ongoing research into what the author terms "the atomic theory of behavior," that is, research into genes that trigger behaviors in living creatures, behaviors such as internal awareness of time, inate mating behaviors, and ability to learn (or remember). Many of these studies use the "drosophila" fly (fruit fly) as their subject; others use various other "low" life forms that, upon study, turn out to be amazingly complex in their behaviors.

The book also looks at how biologists studying in these fields in turn either do or do not, in both cases consciously, draw analogies to human behaviors and the extent to which human genes influence or even dictate behaviors in people - yes, nature versus nurture - and not just basic behaviors such as internal clocks, mating preferences, and ability to remember, but more complex or subtle behaviors or traits, such as shyness, patience, quick or slow tempered. It's a fascinating book, although best digested in smallish doses (I needed time after a chapter or three to mull over what I'd read before moving on), and even now it must be dated given its 1999 copyright date and how quickly the field is advancing. I highly recommend the book to anyone who enjoyed "The Beak of the Finch." "His Brother's Keeper" is also wonderful, albeit a bit lighter on the science and more focused on the drama.

[Radosław Magiera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sięgając po popularnonaukową książkę Jonathana Weinera Czas, miłość, pamięć. Wielki biolog i jego poszukiwanie genezy zachowań i czytając ją równolegle z powieścią Gubernator pióra trzykrotnego laureata Nagrody Pulitzera Roberta Penn Warrena nie zdawałem sobie sprawy, że w rzeczywistości czytam dzieła dwóch gości od Pulitzerów, bowiem Weiner też jest laureatem tej nagrody (z 1995 za The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time). Nie zdawałem sobie sprawy między innymi dlatego, że styl opowieści o wielkim biologu nie powala na kolana ani jasnością przekazu, ani łatwością odbioru czy czytelnością, o walorach artystycznych zaś lepiej w ogóle nie wspominać.

Książka jest trudna w odbiorze z wielu względów. Mnie najbardziej przeszkadzał wspomniany brak klarowności (być może to też sprawa tłumaczenia, nie przesądzam) wynikający z braku jakiejś widocznej koncepcji, jakiejś nadrzędnej konstrukcji, która powinna być w literaturze popularno~ i naukowej odpowiednikiem fabuły w literaturze pięknej. Chaotyczne przeskoki w czasie, tematyce i pomiędzy głównymi postaciami, bowiem książka traktuje nie tylko o Seymourze Benzerze (ur. 15 października 1921 w Nowym Jorku, zm. 30 listopada 2007 w Pasadenie), to duże niedociągnięcie znacząco redukujące satysfakcję z lektury.

Seymour, w założeniu centralna postać i główny temat opracowania, był niezwykłym człowiekiem, prawdziwym uczonym, na którego przykładzie łatwo pokazać różnicę między uczonymi (poszukiwaczami wiedzy, artystami nauki) i naukowcami (rzemieślnikami nauki, wyrobnikami, którzy traktują ją jako środek do osiągnięcia takich czy innych osobistych celów i spełnienia swych ambicji).

...Bezner wierzył, że szczęście polega na zaspokajaniu ciekawości i że odstępstwo od czystej nauki jest odstępstwem od źródła łaski.

...posiadał cechę, bez której nauka nie może istnieć: szeroki zakres zainteresowań, instynkt poszukiwacza i tropiciela, ofiarną, bezinteresowną, dociekliwą ciekawość...

Osiągnąwszy sukcesy w fizyce, zainteresował się potem biofizyką, ale prawdziwą pasję, która nie opuściła go już do końca życia, znalazł w genetyce, w której stał się człowiekiem legendą. W książce jednak jak na mój gust zbyt dowolnie, zwłaszcza po uwzględnieniu tytułu, miesza się jego życie z wątkami dotyczącymi innych uczonych. Życie głównego bohatera jest po prostu zbyt mało wyakcentowane. Gdyby temat był lekki i łatwy, nie byłoby takiego problemu, ale jest trudny i przypuszczam, że sam z siebie mógłby sprawić większości czytelników poważne problemy, a w połączeniu z chaosem chronologicznym i personalnym...

Książka nie jest nowa (pierwsze wydanie w USA w 1999), ale zawiera potężną ilość wiedzy. Wiedzy fascynującej, inspirującej, lecz i w pewnym sensie przerażającej. Przerażającej, bo nieznanej i przerażającej, bo gdy się dostanie w niepowołane ręce...

Genetyka, choć jest być może obok matematyki i nauk społecznych najważniejszą obecnie dla ludzkości dziedziną, nie jest zbyt chętnie omawiana ani komentowana, z tego między innymi powodu, iż dotyka wielu dziedzin wrażliwych w dobie poprawności politycznej. Rasizm, eugenika, etyka, religia... Z tych i wielu innych powodów oraz za sprawą pewnej niechęci mediów do analizowania znaczenia osiągnięć genetyki i będącego jej następstwem niedoinformowania społeczeństwa, Czas, miłość, pamięć może zszokować każdego, nawet tych, którzy systematycznie starają się być na bieżąco z problemami i osiągnięciami nauki, techniki oraz technologii.

Czy można przeszczepić gen jednego gatunku innemu? Czy ludzie mają geny spotykane u innych gatunków? Czy gen może sterować zachowaniem podobnie jak fizycznością? Czy cechy charakteru można mapować w towarzystwie cech tak fizycznych jak kolor oczu? Czy granica seksualności w ciele gynandromorfa może przebiegać pod dowolnym kątem? Czy można widzieć będąc ślepym? Czy już jest możliwa genetyczna dysekcja zachowań? Czy odkryto już geny determinujące płeć albo fotograficzną pamięć? Czy bez głowy można się uczyć? Czy można już wybierać geny dla swoich dzieci? Na ile nasz los jest zdeterminowany jeszcze przed naszym narodzeniem? Odpowiedzi na te pytania rodzą kopalnię problemów, pretekstów do rozważań filozoficznych, moralnych, teologicznych, ekonomicznych i Bóg wie jakich jeszcze. A odpowiedzi, co jeszcze raz podkreślam, budzą przerażenie, gdy skonstatujemy, że takie narzędzia mogą się dostać w ręce fanatyków religijnych, rasistowskich, militarystycznych czy jeszcze jakichś innych lub po prostu w ręce bogaczy opętanych marzeniem o wiecznym zdrowiu, wiecznym życiu i władzy czy też zwykłych głupków, których nie brak ani wśród naukowców, ani wśród polityków.

Opracowanie Weinera ukazuje wpływ genów nie tylko na ciało i wszystko, co w nas fizyczne, ale i wszystko co robimy a nawet myślimy oraz czujemy, co uważamy za nasze najbardziej osobiste ja, nawet na sposób w jaki postrzegamy czas i swe w nim istnienie, na najskrytsze i najwznioślejsze uczucia, na miłość nawet, czy na to, jak i czy o nich pamiętamy. Wydaje się to zderzeniem i sprzecznością na przykład z publikacjami nauk społecznych, jak choćby psychologów społecznych pokroju Zimbardo, którzy udowadniają decydujący wpływ otoczenia na to, jacy jesteśmy, oraz zarazem wydaje się przeciwne tezom o tym, że jesteśmy niezależni, równi i obdarzeni wolną wolą lansowanym choćby przez teologów. Szkoda, że chyba nie dość mocno podkreślono, iż wszystkie trzy punkty widzenia są równie ważne i równie prawdziwe jednocześnie, podobnie jak światło ma jednocześnie charakter korpuskularny i falowy.

Jak w każdej dobrej książce, tak i w tej znajdziemy impulsy do różnych refleksji odbiegających od tematu. Na przykład na temat możliwości prowadzenia przełomowych badań w kluczowych dziedzinach praktycznie bez pieniędzy. No - ale to doczytacie sami.

Książka przynosi wiedzę, ale wiedzę, za którą trzeba zapłacić, jak za wszystko zresztą. Tym razem najpierw pewnym wysiłkiem w czytaniu, a potem dużo większym – w roztrząsaniu przed własnym rozumem i sumieniem dylematów, które się na pewno pojawią. Takie książki jak ta więcej wnoszą do wiedzy o naturze ludzkiej i naturze świata niż całe półki literatury pięknej, która od powstania pisma mieli te tematy i tak naprawdę niczego mądrego nie wymieliła. Tyle, że beletrystykę czyta się łatwiej.

Innymi słowy, zajmowanie się wielkimi metafizycznymi pytaniami bez zrozumienia, w jaki sposób działa umysł, bez wgłębienia się w anatomię i mechanikę umysłu, jest równie beznadziejnym przedsięwzięciem jak zajmowanie się ruchami gwiazd i planet bez zrozumienia mechaniki niebieskiej.

Mimo więc dalekiej od doskonałości formy – absolutnie i z pełnym przekonaniem polecam. Dla tych, którzy lubią wiedzieć, to jedna z tych pozycji, które naprawdę trzeba przeczytać.

źródło:
https://klub-aa.blogspot.com/2020/07/...

[Shen Xu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although not entirely certain what is the genre of this book (popular science? biography?), but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing is descriptive and truthful, providing a vivid account of Seymour Benzer's scientific life.
Before this good read, I have never heard of his name, but surprisingly neither has my biologist husband. It is probably because he kept changing (and excelling!!!) his fields, physics, molecular biology and behavioral genetics...
Even you are not a biography reader, there are other numerous interesting things in this book. For example the views on eugenics are utterly fascinating! Not to mention all those fantastic names they give Drosophila mutants.
One thing I don't know how to take is the experiment methods themselves. The way mutation is created seems rather cruel to me. And probably because fruit flies are not cute and cuddly like puppies... well you can fill out the rest.
Nevertheless, very educational and informative read!

[Nele · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Time, Love, Memory - A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior" von Jonathan Weiner
5/5☆

"Time, Love, Memory" hat mir mein Mentor empfohlen und meinte, dieses Buch hätte all seine Kollegen begeistert, weswegen ich es gleich bestellt habe.
Bei diesem Buch handelt es sich um sehr spezifische Lektüre, die sich mit Drosophila und der mit diesem Organismus verbundenen Verhaltensforschung beschäftigt.

Weiner schildert in "Time, Love, Memory" die Geschichte der Biologie im 20. Jahrhundert. Dabei geht er vor allem auf die ersten Arbeiten an Drosophila und das Leben von Seymoure Benzer und dessen Arbeit im "Fly Room" ein. Besonders spannend sind dabei die Entdeckungen verschiedener Gene, deren Bedeutung für den Organismus und das damit verknüpfte Verhalten.
Beispielsweise wird auf einzigartige Weise beschrieben, wie die Lernfähigkeit von Drosophila entdeckt wurde.
Auch Benzers Begegnungen mit anderen bekannten Wissenschaftsikonen wie Crick, Watson oder seine Verbindungen zu Freud, Schrödinger oder Pavlow werden beschrieben.
Das Buch ist voller Abbildungen, wissenschaftlicher Figuren und Fotografien, sowie mit Zitaten untermauert.

Weiner beschreibt das Geschehene dabei sehr lebhaft, wobei es sich mehr nach einem Roman anfühlt. Besonders geschickt verknüft er die Zusammenhänge wissenschaftlicher Entdeckung, webt Anekdoten und Zeitgenössisches in seinen Text ein.

Ich war wirklich absolut begeistert von "Time, Love, Memory" und kann es nur empfehlen. Vor allem die großartige Verknüpfung bekannter Entdeckungen und Grundsätze mit dem Leben eines Wissenschaftlers war faszinierend.
Ich war sehr beeindruckt von der Bedeutung von Time, Love und Memory im Modellorganismus und deren Übertragung in höhere Lebewesen und den Menschen.

Natürlich ist das Buch sehr biologiespezifisch und wird nicht jeden interessieren. Wer aber Interesse an Verhaltensforschung und Genetik hat, dem kann ich dieses Buch sehr empfehlen.
Es war wirklich fantastisch! (und ich werde bestimmt mehr von Weiner lesen).

[Mehdi · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an undergraduate student in biology, I found work with model organisms to be extremely boring. Arabidopsis thaliana. Caenorhabditis elegans. Drosophila melanogaster. My eyes rolled just thinking about them. Though I understood the research value of an organism that was easy to breed, observe, and manipulate, I longed to study what I considered to be "cooler" species with "cooler" traits, in a "cooler" environment than a lab bench. Over the years, as my interest shifted from organisms to mechanistic and evolutionary questions, my opinion changed.

Weiner and his telling of the history of behavioural genetics pushed me further into seeing the real potential of boring-looking yet immensely interesting organisms. Although the main focus was set on Seymour Benzer, this book isn't really about him, more about the exciting emergence of a new field and its consequences for humanity - but any good book needs a protagonist, right?
From Morgan's basic genetics to Benzer's students' students investigating the networks of genes that control behaviour, Weiner takes his readers on a century-long, fascinating quest. This book is extremely well-written and well-researched (I can barely imagine the amount of research that went into it) - it's a must-read for any science history enthusiast.

Why only four stars, you might ask. Like many works of popular science written before the #MeToo era, this book tends to glorify individual scientists - almost exclusively eccentric white men - and to overlook their problematic behaviours, instead of acknowledging the blood, sweat and tears of the students and employees who made groundbreaking discoveries. Women are barely mentioned, mostly as "wives of", though I have serious doubts they contributed so little to the field. Good thing Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock was mentioned in there to save this book!

Still, overall an excellent work of science communication.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a highly regarded examination of the state-of-the-art in genetics and its discoveries regarding the biological foundations of behavior. It won the 1999 American National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction, highlighting the life and contributions of pioneering scientist Seymour Benzer and his groundbreaking studies of fruit flies (*Drosophila*).
It serves as an engaging biography of Seymour Benzer, a gifted and somewhat eccentric scientist who invented the use of fruit flies to investigate behavior's genetic foundation. Weiner details eloquently Benzer's path from physics to phage genetics and finally to the study of *Drosophila*, demonstrating his distinct method of scientific investigation. The book focuses on the "Fly Rooms" at Caltech, where thousands of mutant fruit flies were carefully examined to learn how genes affect intricate behaviors like learning and recall (memory), courtship rituals (love), and circadian rhythms (time). Tiny creatures, with their relatively simple genetic makeup, became invaluable models for understanding fundamental biological processes that have counterparts in humans.

Beyond Benzer's individual story, "Time, Love, Memory" provides a broader historical context for the field of genetics, tracing its evolution from Gregor Mendel's pea plants to the revolutionary discoveries of DNA by Watson and Crick and the subsequent explosion of molecular biology. Weiner adeptly connects Benzer's work to these larger scientific narratives.
Weiner excels at humanizing the scientific process, offering "you-are-there" descriptions of lab life and portraying the personalities of the scientists involved. He reveals the humor, quirks, frustrations, and triumphs that are inherent to scientific discovery, making complex ideas accessible and engaging for a wide audience. He also weaves in allusions to philosophy, literature, and popular culture, enriching the narrative.

[Kieran Desmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible read. Gave me completely new insight into the ideas that have shaped molecular biology. It is, in effect, a history of the atom theory of behaviour and follows the somewhat enigmatic, yet genius Seymour Benzer and colleagues to tell the story.

It is going to be so useful for my degree. It framed my understanding of the core problems in both my extended essay and FHS project. It also explained in really simple and easy-to-follow terms exactly what the key experiments were in these fields and what they found.

It has given me a lot of food for thought about the future of genes-to-behaviour research. My favourite extract in the whole book is when Weiner points out that when Mendel's laws of genetics were rediscovered in 1900, vast amounts of information regarding the inheritance of traits could be thrown away, because we had unlocked the organising principle that enabled us to immediately understand inheritance in any organism. One day, maybe a set of laws will will be discovered that enable us to throw away all of the work we have done on behavioural genetics, because it will contain an organising prinicple by which all genes can be mapped to corresponding behaviour. What a thought.

[Dinghao Luo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being a journalist, John Weiner writes in a wonderfully readable way, weaving Benzer’s story together with those of some of the most important figures in genetics, each one vividly drawn. This interview-style biography stands in sharp contrast to something like Eric Kandel’s autobiography—much more dynamic, and all the more enjoyable for it.

There is, of course, a certain bias on the scientific side, but that’s inevitable; it’s a book about Benzer, after all, so the story of genes was always going to be talked up, even if we all know they’re nowhere near as all-important as early geneticists once imagined. Best read in combination with Sapolsky’s Behavior.

[Jacopossum · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very fascinating and poetic account of the origin and history of neurogenetics. It describes the joy and frictions that arise from everyday collaborations and dynamics within a lab; the intuitions and creative ways by which questions born and are answered, hypothesis are formulated and tested and debates arise and dissipate through time. Overall, it is an enjoyable short recollection. Captivating in some parts, a little monotonous in others.

[Hind · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful journey through many sciences, centering on the world of Seymour Benzer, a physicist-turned-biologist like myself (I suppose?). I thoroughly enjoyed reading this as a person with no prior knowledge of the tradition of drosophila research. Reminds me of the heyday of quantum mechanics in the 20s.

[Aaron Jesse O'Hare-Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of good stories about scientists and their best experiments. Far too many digressions about tangentially relevant literary works. And toward the end the author indulges in pages of metaphorical claptrap about consciousness.

[Yaoyao Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an epic! I have never read such a science book that is as beautiful as a peotry. The last time I had this reading experience was a few years ago when reading The Emperor of All Maladies. However, The Emperor is more grand, but this one is more personal and beautiful.

[Richp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well done. I never knew what these people were doing, just what some of their prominent names were, when I was at CIT in the 1970s. I was not in biology, of course.

[Peter Reczek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as "The Beak of the Finch". This scientific biography is more about the field than about the scientist and only sketchy about the field. Read the "Beak" first.

[Jeroen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on behavioural research in Drosophila :D

[Andrew Dick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read about how world-class science is actually done.

[Victorlohk]

果蠅.基因.怪老頭 : 生物行為起源的探尋
read chin. ver.

[Fernando Ramírez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great title; I learned a lot about genetics and living things. Made me appreciate non-fiction once again.

[Richard Willson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots about the Caltech fly labs, and my late once-guru Ron Konopka

[Perham Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic look at a "scientist's scientist" and a wonderful introduction to a mind-bending field.