Of Microbes and Life. Les microbes et la vie by Jacques Monod; Ernest BorekReview by: J. ThéodoridèsIsis, Vol. 63, No. 3 (Sep., 1972), p. 461Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/229329 .

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BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 63 * 3 * 218 (1972) 461

Jacques Monod; Ernest Borek (Editors). Of Microbes and Life. Les microbes et la vie. xvii + 312 pp., figs. New York/London:Colum- bia University Press, 1971. $12.50.

Ce volume bilingue (articles en anglais et en fran9ais) est dedie au Dr. Andre Lwoff, Prix Nobel de Medecine 1965, a l'occasion du cinquantieme anniversaire de ses debuts dans la carriere scientifique (1919-1969). I1 com- prend 32 contributions ecrites par ses collegues et amis.

Certaines concernent des souvenirs per- sonnels ou des appreciations sur le jubilaire (articles de J. Monod, P. Fildes, B. C. J. G. Knight, J. Millot, E. Faure-Fremiet, H. Kop- rowski, M. R. Pollock, G. Cohen, F. Jacob, D. Kaiser, R. Dulbecco, N. Groman, L. H. Pereira Da Silva, M. Girard, A. Kirn, P. Schaeffer), des questions de cytologie, micro- biologie et de biochimie (articles de N. 0. Kjeldgaard, S. S. Cohen, L. Alfoldi, E. Borek, R. Austrian, A. M. Pappenheimer Jr., B. Roizman, L. Barksdale, W. E. Van Hey- ningen, S. Fazekas de St. Groth, S. H. Hutner, A. Querido, E. F. Hartree), ou des pro- blemes plus generaux de philosophie scien- tifique (articles de M. Delbriuck, S. E. Luria, R. Y. Stanier).

Les pages les plus interessantes pour le futur historien des sciences sont celles oiu sont evoquees les premieres recherches de A. Lwoff sur les Protozoaires parasites (en collaboration avec E. Chatton) et l'orien- tation ulterieure de celles-ci vers la biochimie des microorganismes qui l'armenerent a s'interesser 'a la biologie moleculaire.

Il est tres regrettable que les editeurs de cet ouvrage n'aient pas donne in fine une biblio- graphie complete des travaux de A. Lwoff. La bibliographie resumee (pp. 10-12) oiu ne figurent ni les tomes des revues, ni les numeros des pages des articles cites n'est d'aucune utilite pour le chercheur, encore moins pour l'historien.

J. THEJODORIDES 16 square Port-Royal

Paris 13e, France

Hermann Staudinger. From Organic Chem- istry to Macromolecules: A Scientific Auto- biography Based on My Original Papers. Translated from the German by Magda Staudinger. xvi + 303 pp., 2 illus., bibl. New York :Wiley-Interscience, 1970.

In the fall of 1963, while in Zurich, I had occasion to correspond with Hermann Staudinger concerning Alfred Werner, on whose biography I was then working. I recall being surprised at the time by the array of degrees on his stationery (he was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Karlsruhe, Mainz, Salamanca, Turin, and Strasbourg as well as the Eidgen6ssische Technische Hochschule), and I wondered what sort of man carried all these honors. The assignment to review this, his last book, has given me the opportunity to satisfy my earlier curiosity.

Hermann Staudinger was not a man of false modesty nor was he egotistical, as this book will testify. He possessed a healthy sense of the importance of his work, and he regarded his honors as evidence that his "original ideas on macromolecular structure have been confirmed and were appreciated." Even that neplus ultra of chemical honors, the Nobel Prize in chemistry, which he was awarded in 1953, he considered as "recog- nition of the field of macromolecular chemistry," a field which he founded and in which he was the principal investigator.

The present volume is an English trans- lation by Staudinger's widow of his Arbeits- erinnerungen, published in 1961 by Dr. Alfred Huthig Verlag of Heidelberg, the publisher of the journal Die Makromolekulare Chemie, which Staudinger founded in 1947 and edited for more than a decade. It is dedicated "To my dear wife Magda / the inspiring and untiring collaborator in the field of macromolecules / in gratitude." In the preface to the German edition, the author recalls the circumstances surrounding the genesis of this, his own view of his life's work. In the 1950s it was suggested that Staudinger publish a complete collection of his scientific papers, a plan that was soon discarded be- cause the book would have been much too long. Instead, two of his collaborators com- piled a catalogue of all his scientific papers and patents (more than eight hundred in all !). To this Staudinger added introductory notes in order to explain the historical develop- ments that led to the publication of these papers. In response to repeated requests, he surveyed the development of macromolecular chemistry during four decades beginning with 1920, including the circumstances that led him to the development of the concept of macro- molecules. The result is the book under re-

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