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J. D. Bernal
The Sage of Science
Andrew Brown
576 pages
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27 black and white plates
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196x129mm
978-0-19-920565-3
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Paperback
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22 March 2007
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- A revealing biography covering all aspects of the life of the brilliant scientist and polymath
- Includes previously unpublished material on Bernal's war work
- A biography rich in historical and cultural detail reaching from the interwar period, through World War II, to the Cold War
- The story of Bernal's life is set amongst the glittering intellectual world of the mid-20th century. He rubbed shoulders with Churchill, Stalin, and Mao, and was close friends with Picasso, MacNiece, and WH Auden.
J.D. Bernal, widely known as Sage since his undergraduate days at Cambridge, was a visionary scientist who was the first to see that the new subject of X-ray crystallography could be applied to the study of life. His pioneering work at Cambridge in the 1930s laid the foundation of molecular biology. He was one of the most influential and brilliant scientists of his time, inspiring many subsequent Nobel laureates.
Bernal's restless energy and legendary intellect took him far beyond science. An astonishing polymath and a fervent Marxist, he was one of the central figures in a cosmopolitan intelligentsia in an age of extremes. The story of Bernal's life reflects the extraordinary political and intellectual climate in which he lived.
He was witness to (and often involved in) some of the great events of the 20th century: the Easter Rebellion, schooldays in the Great War, the anti-fascist movement, the Second World War, pacifist causes and nuclear disarmament during the Cold War. He was a pioneer of Operational Research during WW2 and made the first objective analyses of the effects of bombing on cities. As this biography shows, he played a crucial role in planning the D-Day landings, arriving secretly on the Normandy beaches himself a day later. After the war, he became an international ambassador for Marxism, science, and peace, and was one of the few men familiar with Downing Street, the White House and the Kremlin.
Brown's biography sets out a life richly and fully lived. Nearly every important
British scientist of the mid-third of the 20th century appears in its pages, along with artists (Picasso, Hepworth), writers (Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Pablo Neruda) and statesmen (Churchill, Khrushchev, Mao, and Nehru). This compelling account draws on unprecedented access to Bernal's papers and war reports to piece together a dazzling image of Bernal: his Irish Catholic childhood, his Cambridge years, his research, his dedication to science, his intellectual brilliance, his blind, unswerving commitment to Marxism, his unorthodox Bohemian love life. But above all, the Bernal who emerges from this often critical account is a man not only of remarkable mental powers but of great warmth, kindness, and humanity.
Readership: General readers of biography, scientists, and historians interested in Bernal, science, science and politics, and the history of science.
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Andrew Brown, Freelance writer
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Review(s) from previous edition
""To read this book is almost to relive the European intellectual life of the last century. Andrew Brown's account of Bernal's scientific work is written with extraordinary clarity... he takes us on a thrilling voyage." - Sebastian Faulkes, The Spectator
""...admirable book..."" - Graham Farmelo, Sunday Telegraph
"'J.D. Bernal - "Sage", because he knew everything - was one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. Andrew Brown tells the story of this brilliant, complex man with his interwoven scientific, and intense personal and political lives, in fascinating detail. It runs through the intellectual and political turmoil of the thirties, to the Normandy Beaches, the post-war reconstruction which promoted science as part of our culture, and the Cold War."" - Sir Aaron Klug
"'Andrew Brown's biography matches well the life of the extraordinary Irishman whose genius inspired the birth of molecular biology.'" - James D. Watson
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Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1: A Long Way to Go
2: Cambridge Undergraduate
3: Bohemian Crystallographer
4: Science Fantasy
5: The New Kingdom
6: Soviet Pilgrims
7: The Shadow of the Hawk's Wings
8: The Entertainment of the Scientist
9: Scientist at War
10: Bombing Strategy
11: Combined Operations
12: Overlord
13: Lessons of War
14: Rebuilding
15: Central Dogma
16: Peace at Any Price?
17: The Physical Basis of Life
18: History and the Origins of Life
19: Marxist Envoy
20: Peacebroking
21: Order and Disorder
22: Years of Struggle
Postscript
Notes
Index
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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