The thrilling story of how scientists unlocked a new window onto how life works
Venki Ramakrishnan is a structural biologist who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the structure and function of the ribosome. He was knighted in 2012 and elected president of the Royal Society in 2015. He works at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.
'Invitingly witty'
*Nature*
‘A must-read for anyone interested in a glimpse of the messy
business – rivalries, failed experiments, the frustration of
mistakes – of how science happens.’
*The Times*
‘If someone had told me that one of the most witty and enthralling
books I’d read this year would be on the quest to understand
ribosomes, I believe I would have laughed in his face, but I would
have been quite wrong. Gene Machine is beyond superb.’
*Bill Bryson, author of A Short History of Nearly
Everything*
‘An engaging and witty memoir…that highlights how science actually
works… This profoundly human story is written with honesty and
humility… Anyone who is captivated by an absorbing story well told
will find much to appreciate in this fascinating book.’
*Forbes*
‘This is not an objective history of the field, but a highly
personal account. As such, anyone who wants to know how modern
science really works should read it. It’s all here: the ambition,
jealousy and factionalism — as well as the heroic late nights,
crippling anxiety and disastrous mistakes — that underlie the
apparently serene and objective surface represented by the
published record.’
*Nature*
‘Discovering the structure of the ribosome was a truly incredible
moment in the history of humankind… For students of how science
actually happens, this is a book to be treasured and pored
over.’
*Matt Ridley, author of Genome*
‘It is [Ramakrishnan’s] full embrace of the role of the antihero
that makes Gene Machine so much fun to read and also serves as a
reminder to us all of the beating human heart that lies at the
center of every advance in science.’
*Wall Street Journal*
‘The ribosome, a structure of astonishing complexity, “lies at the
crossroads of life” and Venki Ramakrishnan played a key role in
revealing its biological mysteries. His superb account lays out the
science with great lucidity, but he also grants us the human face
of science – the hard work and brilliant insights, of course, but
also the role of luck, of personalities, jealousy, money, the
roulette of major awards, and the further rewards heaped upon the
fortunate. Science, in his glorious telling, becomes “a play, with
good and bad characters”. Competition and collaboration can appear
inseparable, crucial figures get overlooked. It’s a wonderful book
and a great corrective to the notion of science as dispassionate,
untainted objectivity.’
*Ian McEwan*
‘[Ramakrishnan's] meticulously detailed and generous memoir has the
same disarming frankness as The Double Helix. His personal honesty
about the competitive ambition that drove him is tempered by his
deeply thoughtful reflections on the potentially corrupting effect
of big prizes. Gene Machine will be read and re-read as an
important document in the history of science.’
*Richard Dawkins*
‘An enchanting and invigorating work, Gene Machine casts a
many-angled light on the world of science, the nature of discovery,
and on one of the deepest mysteries of twentieth-century biology.
Ramakrishnan, one of the key players in deciphering the molecular
basis of protein translation, gives us both a rollicking scientific
story and a profoundly human tale. In the tradition of The
Double Helix, Gene Machine does not hesitate to highlight
the process by which science advances: moving through fits and
starts, often underscored by deep rivalries and contests,
occasionally pitching towards error and misconception, but
ultimately advancing towards profound and powerful truths. An
outsider to the world of ribosome biology – an Indian
immigrant, a physicist by training – Ramakrishnan retains
his “outsider’s” vision throughout the text, reminding us
about the corrosive nature of scientific prizes, and
the intensity of competition that drives researchers (both
ideas, I suspect, will have a munificent effect on our current
scientific culture). Ramakrishnan’s writing is so honest, lucid and
engaging that I could not put this book down until I had read to
the very end.’
*Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies
and The Gene*
‘Quite a ride. This is a riveting personal account of the race to
decipher the structure of the ribosome, one of the most complex and
fundamental machines in the cell… Ramakrishnan’s telling is laced
with wisdom spun from a remarkable life story and the sharp lab
anecdotes that are the lifeblood of everyday science.’
*Nick Lane, author of The Vital Question*
‘This book is dynamite. Like no science book ever before, this is
an honest, frank and simply jaw-dropping account of how a relative
outsider ended up winning a Nobel Prize.’
*Daniel M. Davis, author of The Beautiful Cure*
‘This exhilarating account of the race to understand the molecular
machine that turns genes into flesh and blood is remarkable for its
candid insights into the way science is really done, by human
beings with all their talents and foibles. Venki Ramakrishnan, an
outsider in the race, gives an insider’s view of the decades-long
quest to map the million atoms in the machine to fathom the
fundamentals of life, pave the way for new antibiotics, and share
the glory of the Nobel Prize.’
*Roger Highfield, Director of External Affairs, Science Museum
Group*
‘In Gene Machine one of the world’s leading scientists reveals the
reality of scientific discovery and the rivalry, collaboration and
thrills that are involved. The result is a brilliant under-the-hood
account of what it takes to win the Nobel Prize. Exciting and
brutally honest, Venki’s book explains the dramatic turns in the
race to describe the structure of the ribosome – an essential
component of every cell that has ever lived. I laughed out loud, I
shouted in disbelief, and I learned so much from reading this
book.’
*Matthew Cobb, author of Life’s Greatest Secret*
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