Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology » (1st Edition)

The Eighth Day of Creation is a richly detailed account of how molecular biologists came to understand the fundamental processes of life - in short, how they explained heredity. It is one of the century's most celebrated works of science writing. On its first appearance, in 1979, it received rapturous praise from scientists and the general public for the accuracy, clarity, and vivacity with which it portrays the principal figures and their remarkable discoveries. The author, Horace Freeland Judson, had been a correspondent for Time in London and Paris before turning freelance; he combined the instincts of a journalist with the measured perspective of an historian, conducting revealing interviews with upwards of a hundred and twenty investigators, going back to the leaders again and again. Many of these individuals are now among the most revered in science; in the 1950s and 1960s they made a revolution in biology. He captures the human as well as the scientific elements in a drama played out for more than two decades in laboratories in Cambridge, England, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, in London and Paris, at Caltech and Cold Spring Harbor. Few books have had such a compelling tale to tell, and its influence on science writing and science history has been profound. To this expanded edition, Judson has made minor corrections and two substantial additions.

Nature

A historian has mused that the memory of man is too frail a thread on which to hang history; Judson's achievement, in drawing out the memories of so many participants in the epic of molecular biology and waving them into a single robust skein, is magisterial. His work fittingly commemorates a golden age which already seems as remote as that of Darwin and Huxley.

Foreword to the Expanded Edition

Foreword to the First Edition

Part I: DNA - Function and Structure: The elucidation of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, the genetic material

Part II: RNA - The Functions of the Structure: The breaking of the genetic code, the discovery of the messenger

Part III: PROTEIN - Structure and Function: The solution of how protein molecules work

Epilogue: On the transformation of molecular biology 1970-1995

Afterword: In Defense of Rosalind Franklin: The myth of the wronged heroine

Appendix: A Postcard from Mount Fourier