Alan N. Schechter, M.D., Laboratory Chief, Senior Scientist and Historical Consultant, National Institutes of Health
“The few scientists who turn to writing fiction late in their career, as did Carl Djerassi and E.O. Wilson, clearly wish to convey the personal components of a career in science along with the more technical aspects, and often also write autobiographies to explain their own trajectories. We are fortunate in this memoir by Joram Piatigorsky to learn of his career as one of the world’s authorities on the developmental biology of the eye, in studies from invertebrates to mammals.
“We also learn of his very different, but equally privileged, paternal and maternal heritages and the opportunities but also burdens of being born into these families at an epochal moment. His decades of interest and expertise in Inuit art have also become part of his way of being able to achieve his own voice in the world. Piatigorsky shows us that science, art and imaginative writing are all complementary ways of perceiving the world, although few of us attempt more than one of these paths. I think readers will find this book comparable, for example, to John Tyler Bonner’s now classic Lives of a Biologist, in explaining both the personal perceptions and scientific milieu of a truly examined life.”
