Good experience

Love it a lot. Highly recommended to all my scientific friends and colleagues to read.

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Lucidly written, distinctly narrated

V Ramakrishnan's uses simple words, yet the language is vivid enough to help us visualise the (wo)men and molecules that inhabit this book. Waterson's narration is pleasant, even paced and distinct. A good listen!

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Race for cracking the ribosome structure

A good overview of the race for cracking the ribosome structure. The book gives a very good account of the author's and his competitors' work leading to cracking the ribosome structure. Along the way a reasonably good explanation of the ribosome and it's functions are given.

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Interesting glimpse of the life of a scientist

I started this book after reading "the gene" and this book submitted my understanding of kind of research done in physiology. Not being from the biology background, was never a hindrance. It was also interesting to know how nobel prize is percieved in scientific community.

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Interesting story but the author needs to be aware non-European scientific discoveries

He attributes discovery of calculus to European scientists in the 17th century whereas it is well known that from a study by universities of Manchester and Exeter which says it knows where the true credit lies — and it's with someone else completely.

The "Kerala school," a little-known group of scholars and mathematicians in fourteenth century India, identified the "infinite series" — one of the basic components of calculus — around 1350.

He also talks about being irritated by the multitude of emails from his country of birth when he won the noble. However he gives a weak reason for accepting knighthood in England.

While I liked the story, a part of me was disappointed by the author’s rejection of his roots.

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3 people found this helpful

Good read (but only if you are a researcher)

This book describes the journey of the scientists for finding ribosome structures and how it works. It is obviously full of chemistry terms. Author has explained it well, but it is still the matter of interest. I am not very interested in chemistry, so I did not find it much interesting.

Researchers however must read it to check out how that world functions. Author calls Noble prize a lottery! He honestly describes the pitfalls and limitations of Nobel (or any recognition). It helps to put the awards and recognition in perspective. Many times mind tricks us in thinking award as the aim. This book can tell you how random the selection actually is! It is not exactly correlated with the work you do, work is ofcourse important but there are other dominant factors which no one can control.

Concluding -
For scientists - must read
Others can safely skip. You won't miss anything.

By the way, this is a kind of accidental read for me. I mistook this book with Siddharth Mukharjis book with name starting with Gene, and I realised it much much later that I was listening to a wrong book. That book was in my wishlist, this was not! Anyway.

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Not for listening

this book should not be listened. The contents cannot be understood by listening. Also the book is about many things the author did, more like a work story. I was expecting more about learning about genome and ribosom.

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