Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior

Gives you a vivid picture of the history of development of Drosophila as the golden bug of genetics. Must read for every Drosophila biologist!

Loved the book

Weiner who has won the Pulitzer for The Beak of the Finch enraptures us again with a circuitous but straightforward (how he manages that can be known only to the ghost of Proust) true tale of the life and the curiosity of Seymour Benzer the only lord of the Flies. Weiner manages to take on the life of this driven, self-motivated enthusiastic genius from Brooklyn and follow the perambulations of his decades-long study of the fruit fly. It turns out that the studies by this single man (et cohorts) have raised not only humanity's knowledge about how every part of the body finds its origin, form and function in the gene, how he has described and discovered methods to reveal how the gene acts and reacts if transplanted from one locus to another, how those who study this and reveal this information to others must, to live a moral life, must be wary of his own science and must follow Hypocrates' dictum "to do no harm." Metaphysical questions are raised along with the more mundane, making this book important, layered on all levels with differing meaning, and thought-provoking both to the meanest and to the most generous of minds. I hope the reader who reads this review will read every word in every book this kind, attentive brilliant author writes. Wiener has won all sorts of literary prizes, Benzer his subject the Nobel. What a sandwich! G Kossow in Florida PS I gave a copy of this to my surgeon on the way to getting a new battery for pacemaker right in operating room! Now THAT's enthusiasm for a book!!!!

Weiner is capable of describing complex data and thorny hypotheses with great clarity. His tale of Seymour Benzer was filled with the small anecdotes that we all shared about this great scientist, but also with insight into the brilliance of the man and his colleagues. A compelling book. I want to read it yet again to better understand the depth of Benzer's work. The historical review of genetics and the major players, including Mendel, Morgan, Sturtevant, and others that opened the field to the molecular revolution, gave me insights beyond my own lifetime of science. His differences of opinion with other great scientists such as Delbruck, Crick relfected the warmth and humanity of an extraordinary generation of physicists turned biologists. A delightful book to read. My only reservation is the closing chapter on human brains. He misunderstands the nature of Blindsight, and his description of Carol Miller's notions of localization of "apathy" is not up to the standard of the rest of the book.

Great!

When I went to order a copy of "The Beak of the Finch" for a friend I discovered that Jonathan Weiner had also written this book. How could I have missed it all of these years? I have noticed a couple sentences that the author would not have included today (1 1/2 decades after he wrote it), but it this is another fascinating scientific history and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

This book gives the most brilliant history from discovery of physics to chromosomes to viruses and recombinant technology. Should be on every science student's shelf....to READ!