The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson review â a science page-turner
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Jennifer Doudna with her Nobel gold medal, December 2020. Photograph: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press/EPA
Jennifer Doudna with her Nobel gold medal, December 2020. Photograph: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press/EPA
Thu 11 Mar 2021 02.30 EST
One of the most striking passages in Walter Isaacsonâs new book comes towards the end. It is 2019 and a scientific meeting is under way at the famous Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in New York State, but James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, is banned from it because of the racist and scientifically unfounded views he has expressed on intelligence. Isaacson, who is to interview Watson, therefore has to make his way to the house on the nearby campus that the scientist has been allowed to keep. When the conversation sails da