The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson

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Description

The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.

When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.

Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned ​a curiosity ​of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.

The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code.

Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm…Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids?

After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is a thrilling detective tale that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.

"Issacson depicts science at its most exhilarating in this lively biography of Jennifer Doudna, the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in medicine for her work on the CRISPR system of gene editing...The result is a gripping account of great scientific advancement and of the dedicated scientists who realized it."--Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

About the Author

Walter Isaacson is an American historian, journalist, and writer. He is a Professor of History at Tulane University. He has been President and CEO of Aspen Institute based in Washington, D.C., Chairman and CEO and CNN, and Managing Editor of Times. He is a gem writer of biographies such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Kissinger. He is the co-author of 'The Wise Men: Six Friends and The World They Made' with Evan Thomas.

Walter Isaacson

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Rating: 4.7/5

Author: Walter Isaacson

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Publishing Date: March 9, 2021

Edition Language: English

Genre: Genetics, Scientist Biographies, Women's Biographies

ISBN-10: 1982115858

ISBN-13: 978-1982115852

Pages: 560 (Hardcover)

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