The Professor, the Institute and DNA: Oswald T. Avery: His Life and Scientific Achievements

by René Dubos

The decorative dustjacket adds much to this vintage hardcover. (Don' t buy this one without the jacket) The dustjacket does show some wear along the edges from shelving. Book is clean and bright inside, VG+.

238 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

René Jules Dubos was an American microbiologist, experimental pathologist, environmentalist, and humanist. He is credited as an author of the maxim, "Think globally, act locally".

Reviews

[M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part portrait, part memoir, part record of failures that paved the way to wild success, this is not a biography in the usual sense. Rather, it's a case of a protege bearing witness to the life of a mentor, and trying to secure the legacy that mentor couldn't be bothered to tend to.

Some of the detailed discussion of experiments was tough going; now and then I wished I had a bit more biochemistry under my belt.

And the 'in the moment' descriptions of experiments that read like great advances until one turned the page to discover that they were mistakes on the way to something else were at turns bracing and inviting. A proper history of failures is so unusual and hard to come by.

Not a breezy read by any means, but I recommend it to the curious.

[Frank Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable and historically important book by Rene Dubos, who deserved the Nobel Prize for his pioneering of the discovery of antibiotics from soil-based organisms. Tragically, it was almost certainly his reaction to the untimely death of his first wife, Marie Louise Bonnet, from tuberculosis when Dubos was at the height of his research at the Rockefeller that caused him to abandon his work in despair. Dubos was subsequently awarded two Pulitzers for his writing and contribution to ecological and environmental awareness.

I wrote about him and his extraordinary story in my book, The Forgotten Plague - the beautifully illustrated version of this book, published in the UK, has a different title - Tuberculosis: The Greatest Story Never Told.

A deserving hero in my estimation.

[Avempace · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the lobby of the Caspary Auditorium at the Rockefeller University there is a portrait exhibit of those great scientists of that venerable institution who had won the Noble and Lasker awards. Prominent among those luminaries is Oswald Avery, winner of the 1947 Lasker prize and discoverer of DNA as the repository of biological inheritance. Avery never received the Noble prize, arguably one of the most lamentable misses of the Swedish selection committee. As someone who has made one of the great discoveries of the ages, Avery emerges as a stoic and modest man, the very antithesis of a celebrity scientist that one may have expected. The biography of Rene' Dubos pays a loving tribute to the man and his institute, and makes for a very nostalgic read for an era of science that is now bygone. Recommended to those interested in the history of the discovery of DNA and in American biomedical science of the first half of the 20th century. It is also illuminating of the history of the Rockefeller University and, indirectly, on the workings of American Philanthropy (exemplified by the Rockefeller Foundation) in the New Deal era.

[Bri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read it for work. It was quasi-interesting, as interesting as it could be for a non-scientist I suppose. You can tell the author had a great respect for Avery.