Volume 37, Number 13 · August 16, 1990
High on Science
By M.F. Perutz
A Very Decided Preference: Life with Peter Medawar
by Jean Medawar
Norton, 256 pp., $19.95
The Threat and the Glory: Reflections on Science and Scientists
by P.B. Medawar, edited and introduced by David Pyke, foreword by Lewis Thomas
HarperCollins/A Cornelia and Michael Bessie Book, 320 pp., $22.50
Peter Brian Medawar: 28 February 1915–2 October 1987
by N.A Mitchison F.R.S.
Reprinted from Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society, Volume 35 pp.
Peter Medawar was a great biologist whose research helped to make possible the transplantation of human organs. He also thought profoundly about the methods, the meaning, and the values of scientific research, and he published his thoughts in books and essays that are models of clarity, style, and wit. Born in 1915 in Brazil of a Lebanese father and an English mother, he received his education in England and made his career there. He became a full professor at thirty-two, a Fellow of the Royal Society at thirty-four, a Nobel Laureate at forty-five, and head of Britain's largest medical research laboratory at forty-seven. At fifty-four, when his intellectual powers and capacity for work seemed inexhaustible, a cerebral hemorrhage destroyed the right half of his brain, but it did not impair his determination, his vitality and optimism. Three years later he was back at his research and literary work, and he lectured around the globe. In 1980 a cerebral thrombosis set him back severely. Again he recovered and wrote more papers and essays as well as a hilarious autobiography which makes even his tragedy an occasion for laughter. [1] In 1985, another series of strokes robbed him of his ability to speak clearly and of most of his eyesight, and in 1987 they finally killed him.
Review, 3855 words
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