Memoir Of A Thinking Radish: An Autobiography PDF
Preview Memoir Of A Thinking Radish: An Autobiography
MEMOIR OF A THINKING RADISH An Autobiography PETER MEDAWAR Oxford New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY TRESS 1986 Oxf&td Universityfrtit, Vfirffo#Street, Oxford0X1*DP Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala l,ninfinT Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi DaresSalaam tope Town Melbourne Auckland am!associatedCompanies in Beirut Berlin Ibadan Nicosia Oxford isa trademark ofOxford UniversityPress ©Peter Medau\ir1986 Allrights reserved. Nopartof thispublication maybe reproduced, storedina retrievalsystem,or transmitted, inanyformat byanymeans, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, orotherwise, without theprior permissionof Oxford University Press Phis book J'J soldsubiectf(tthecondition that itshallnot,by way of tradeorOtherwise, he lent, re-sold,hiredoutor circulated Without thepublisher'spriorconsentin anyformofbindingorcotter other thanthatin which itiifubliibiedand withoutasimilarcondition includingthiscondition lutingimposed On thesubsequentpurchaser British LibraryCataloguingin PublicationData Medawar, P,B. jV!fwr<jHrof Jthinking radish' an—autobiography. 7.Medawar, P.B.—1.Scientists Crc.U Britain Biography I. Title fpf-i‘4 ISBN 0-19-2ijjjy-o LibraryofOnnÿr<;jiCatalogingin Publication Medawar, P B (Peter Brian),191f Memoirofa thinkingradish, Includesindex, 1. Medawar,—P. If. fPeter Brian),1915- 2. Immunologists Great Britain—Biography I, Title. yj{!Hn.yi.MjfA)f, 1986 61f>,oyr9'0914 /B,1£j jft-SOv ISBN Q-iy-zijji?™a Set byHopeServices, Abingdon, Oxon. Printedin GreatBritain by Butler&Tanner Ltd., frame,Somerset To two s, two d ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS MY secretary and literary assistant Mrs Joy Heys gave me, as always, invaluable help in preparingthis book for press.The help of my wife and fellow-author Jean has been most profound. 1 m - * - > - CONTENTS ListofPlates xi Introduction 3 VeryEarlyYears 5 School l6 Oxford 44 Early Research 6i Flashbacks 91 Birmingham 102 University College London 123 The National Institute for Medical Research '44 Jean r8o On Livinga Bit Longer r?6 Index ioj I T ! : * LIST OF PLATES BETWEEN PACES 84 AND85 f. My mother’s mother with hersisters,1.1505 1. At Oxford,c.t939 3. Jean Shinglcwood Taylor,1338 4. Members of the Theoretical Biology Club at Magdalen College Oxford, 1946 5. Leaving withJean to collect theCBE,1358 6, (luring a Ciha conference at Knyaumont in France, jure 1359 7. The Royal Society medallists, Decemlser 19J9 8, At a party held by the Ciba Foundation, December i960 9. The Nobel ceremony, December 1960 io, PBM receivingthe Nobel Prize 11. With the family reading the Nobel announcement it, WithJean, 1980 H ' The lives of scientists, considered as Lives. slirwsr always makedull reading...Itcould hardlybeotherwise. Academics car only seldom lead lives rh.it arc spacious or exciting in a worldly seise. They need laboratories or libraries and the company or other academics. Their work is in no way marie deeper or more cogent by privation, distress or worldly bufferings, Their private lives may he Unhappy, $trarely mixed up or comic, but rot in ways that tell US anything special aboutthenatureordirectionof their work. Academies lie outside the devastation area of the literary convention according to which the lives of artists and men of letters are intrinsically interesting, a source of cultural insight in them¬ selves. Ifascientistweretocut hisearoff,nolinewould takeit asevidence of a heightered sensibilityÿ if a historian were to fail (as Ituskin did) to consummate bis marriage, we should not Suppose [bat our understandingof historical scholarship had somehow been enriched... Peter Mcdawar, Hutil's Republic (Oxford, ipfia), ihj ascientificautobiography belongstoamost awkward literary genre, if [he difficulties facing a mail trying (O record hes life — are great—and few have overcome them Successfully they arecompounded in the case of scientists, of whom many lead monotonous and uneventful lives and who, besides, often do not know how to write , Erwin Oiargaff,Science,clix (icjÿk). A scientist's biographer deals with much duller materia!than docsa chronicler of Kings...1 have found most biographies ot scientists remarkably uninteresting and their autobiographies even more so, . . Salvador Luna
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