Texts and Reading Assignments
for the ID1 Bio Bio Seminar:
The seminar will read biographies, and in addition you need to obtain D.
Hacker’s A Writer’s Reference, 5th edition, available in
the bookstore, which will be used in class from time to time for our discussions
of writing. We will read about
100-150 pages per week, but there will be weeks with a lighter assignment.
The assigned books include Darwin’s autobiography, Microbe Hunters by
Paul de Kruif, two books about the discovery of DNA (Watson on Watson and Sayre
on Franklin), one about Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock’s career including
her studies of genes as parts of chromosomes and her discovery of jumping genes,
and one about Francois Jacob with some philosophical thoughts about science and
scientists, called The Statue Within. We
will also read a biographical book about David Baltimore’s discovery of viral
replication/reverse transcriptase, his concerns about recombinant DNAs and
involvement in the moratorium begun by scientists, and his long ethics case
brought by people at the National Institutes of Health. Baltimore is currently
the president of Caltech and still an active immunology researcher there; he
will be speaking on campus on November 20. We will read one book about a married
couple, the Grants, and their research on evolution on isolated islands, called The
Beak of the Finch. Finally, we
will read Invisible Frontiers, presenting biographical insights about
several leaders of the biotechnology industry in their early days.
Bibliographical information about these texts will be available to you on
the course web site for use in citing them in papers.
List of texts for Biographies of Biologists/ Hoopes ID 1
class, Pomona, fall, 2003
Author:
Charles Darwin (Edited by Nora Barlow)
Title:
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882, WW Norton &
Company, New
York and London, 1958
ISBN:
0-393-31069-8
Author:
Paul
de Kruif
Title:
Microbe Hunters, Harvest Books, San Diego, New York, London,
1926, renewed
1954.
ISBN if available:
0-15-600262-0
Author:
Evelyn Fox-Keller
Title:
A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara
McClintock, WH
Freeman and Company, New York and San
Francisco, 1983
ISBN:
0-7167-1433-7
Author:
James D. Watson
Title:
The Double Helix, Mentor Book, New American Library, New
York and
Scarborough, Ont, 1968.
Author:
Anne
Sayre
Title:
Rosalind Franklin and DNA WW Norton and Company, New
York and London,
1995
isbn:
0-393-00868-1
Author:
Francois
Jacob
Title:
The Statue Within, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold
Spring Harbor,
NY, 1995.
ISBN if available:
0-87969-476-9
Author:
Shane Crotty
Title:
Ahead of the Curve: David Baltimore’s Life in Science,
University
of California
Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2001
ISBN:
0-520-22557-0
Author:
Jonathan
Weiner
Title:
The Beak of the Finch, Vintage Books div of Random House, New
York, 1994.
ISBN if available:
0-679-73337-x
Author:
Stephen
S. Hall
Title:
Invisible Frontiers, Tempus Books of Microsoft Press,
Redmond, WA,
1987.
ISBN if available:
1-55615-172-1