- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; New edition edition (28 Jan 1988)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0192820834
- ISBN-13: 978-0192820839
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.7 x 1.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 609,118 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
The self-deprecating image of man - an amalgam of Pascal's "thinking reed" and Falstaff's "forked radish" - that provides a title for Peter Medawar's autobiography stems from his belief that the professional lives of scientists usually make dull reading. Sir Peter Medawar is a scientist of world renown, a member of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the British Academy. He won a Nobel Prize in 1960 for work that formed the basis of modern immunology and organ transplantation. He also wrote a series of essays: "Pluto's Republic", and two books: "Advice to a young scientist" and "The limits of science". He was awarded the order of merit in 1981. He describes this autobiography, loosely modelled on Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria", as "a book of opinions which my life may be regarded as a pretext for holding". He covers his early years in Rio de Janeiro, Oxford in the 1930s, illness and recovery and his work in a wide variety of institutions around the world.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
Peter Medawar won a Nobel Prize and also wrote marvellous books about science. This is his autobiography. His academic achievements are outstanding, not least his work on the immune system. In covering his life he follows a chronological order, but alights at different times with different depth and this means the book places the emphasis on the interesting, sometimes revealing, thoughts and strong opinions of this extremely bright man. The book is also very witty.
Medawar, simply by his writing, also leads the reader back to a former time, of exigency and rigorous thinking where intellectual laziness was brutally laid bare. Reading the book can therefore make you feel rather small and minimally educated; both because of the breadth of his knowledge but also because of his amazing capacity for exploring ideas. He does at times also reveal a sharp bitterness and an unattractive, intellectually cruel aggression against certain people and ideas, notably towards religion and the snobbishness of those he had to confront in England, being one "of Arabic extraction".
The aggression towards religion may perhaps have been augmented by the repeated and increasingly incapacitating strokes suffered by this heavy smoker. The result is a less-reasoning, angry and rather emotional Medawar. It does not diminish the book however. Instead it provides a more complete picture of an extraordinary person. He was human after all.
Medawar, simply by his writing, also leads the reader back to a former time, of exigency and rigorous thinking where intellectual laziness was brutally laid bare. Reading the book can therefore make you feel rather small and minimally educated; both because of the breadth of his knowledge but also because of his amazing capacity for exploring ideas. He does at times also reveal a sharp bitterness and an unattractive, intellectually cruel aggression against certain people and ideas, notably towards religion and the snobbishness of those he had to confront in England, being one "of Arabic extraction".
The aggression towards religion may perhaps have been augmented by the repeated and increasingly incapacitating strokes suffered by this heavy smoker. The result is a less-reasoning, angry and rather emotional Medawar. It does not diminish the book however. Instead it provides a more complete picture of an extraordinary person. He was human after all.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
An autobiography both modest and hilarious
14 May 2000
Format:Paperback
It's unfortunate that this book is out of print. Medewar won the 1960 Nobel Prize for his research in tissue transplantation, and later wrote extensively on science and scientific method (see his other books, esp. Pluto's Republic).
This book is autobiographical and, as the author suggests, is not so much a life story as a series "of opinions which my life can be regarded as a pretext for holding." Well-written, lucid, with many wonderful descriptions of the humor and fun which came with his life. He looks back on his life with a degree of indulgent joy; as successful as it was, it was the journey, not the destination, which he enjoyed.
If you feel that the education system is not geared for you, yet you hunger for what an education can provide, this book will give you hope. Medewar succeeded despite the education system, rather than because of it.
This book has some strong opinions in it, with which you may not agree. That's fine. Enjoy it for its clarity and enjoyment of life, despite various trials along the way.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Risible aspects of a life
14 July 2007
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
To begin at the end, Peter Medawar concludes "despite its vicissitudes, my life has by no means been without its risible aspects."
That is how we know him, because that is how he presented himself in a series of books, notably "Pluto's Republic": a vastly intelligent, ironic, sardonic skewerer of silly egos.
Well, that and his Nobel Prize for discovering immunological resistance.
In 1986, at age 71 and slowed by a series of strokes, he composed a brief, episodic "life" that is not, as he says, so much a history of his life as a chance to express opinions about things.
It is his willingness to express opinions -- some original, some oft-thought but seldom expressed -- that keeps all Medawar's popular writings so fresh. And his courage. Not many -- probably not any -- other well-known public figure in England would go public with his remarks about the sadism of the homosexual nurses who plagued him in a rehabilitation hospital after his first stroke. We can take it as read that the sadism was real; Medawar, of all people, would not make it up.
He also has at snobismus, disparagers of the National Health Service (the greatest social innovation in the past 150 years, he says, apparently dating from the revision of the Poor Laws), communism, racism (as the son of Lebanese Maronite, he ran up against it), and many others.
Medawar pulls no punches. He was a great admirer of Karl Popper and judged the later generation of philosophers "mavericks and clowns." A just assessment despite the disrepute that Logical Positivism also enjoys now.
It is thus startling to discover that even Medawar nods. I do not share his enthusiasm for opera, which is neither here nor there; but his distaste for Gilbert is strangely stated. He finds Sullivan's music mediocre but Gilbert's librettos callous in their treatment of old maids. Maybe so, but it is odd for him to say the cruelty came about because of a well-known demographic shortage of marrying men in the middle classes.
Whatever can he mean by that? Yes, there was a shortaage when he started attending G&S productions, but there was no slaughter of men in the 1840s and `50s that would have affected Gilbert's or his audiences' attitudes in the `70s and `80s. Very strange.
It is also a shock to find Medawar, usually so careful and skeptical, falling for the claptrap of Amory and Hunter Lovins. That he would admire such Luddites is particularly perplexing in light of his genial acceptance of scientific progress. The Lovinses are not about either progress or science. Strange bedfellows.
That is how we know him, because that is how he presented himself in a series of books, notably "Pluto's Republic": a vastly intelligent, ironic, sardonic skewerer of silly egos.
Well, that and his Nobel Prize for discovering immunological resistance.
In 1986, at age 71 and slowed by a series of strokes, he composed a brief, episodic "life" that is not, as he says, so much a history of his life as a chance to express opinions about things.
It is his willingness to express opinions -- some original, some oft-thought but seldom expressed -- that keeps all Medawar's popular writings so fresh. And his courage. Not many -- probably not any -- other well-known public figure in England would go public with his remarks about the sadism of the homosexual nurses who plagued him in a rehabilitation hospital after his first stroke. We can take it as read that the sadism was real; Medawar, of all people, would not make it up.
He also has at snobismus, disparagers of the National Health Service (the greatest social innovation in the past 150 years, he says, apparently dating from the revision of the Poor Laws), communism, racism (as the son of Lebanese Maronite, he ran up against it), and many others.
Medawar pulls no punches. He was a great admirer of Karl Popper and judged the later generation of philosophers "mavericks and clowns." A just assessment despite the disrepute that Logical Positivism also enjoys now.
It is thus startling to discover that even Medawar nods. I do not share his enthusiasm for opera, which is neither here nor there; but his distaste for Gilbert is strangely stated. He finds Sullivan's music mediocre but Gilbert's librettos callous in their treatment of old maids. Maybe so, but it is odd for him to say the cruelty came about because of a well-known demographic shortage of marrying men in the middle classes.
Whatever can he mean by that? Yes, there was a shortaage when he started attending G&S productions, but there was no slaughter of men in the 1840s and `50s that would have affected Gilbert's or his audiences' attitudes in the `70s and `80s. Very strange.
It is also a shock to find Medawar, usually so careful and skeptical, falling for the claptrap of Amory and Hunter Lovins. That he would admire such Luddites is particularly perplexing in light of his genial acceptance of scientific progress. The Lovinses are not about either progress or science. Strange bedfellows.
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