The Nominations have been announced, I learned from the blog LA Observed. Among them:
Science and Technology nominees:
• Joyce E. Chaplin for “The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius” (Basic Books)
• Ann Gibbons for “The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors” (Doubleday)
• Eric R. Kandel for “In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind” (W.W. Norton)
• Daniel J. Levitin for “This is Your Brain on Music: the Science of a Human Obsession” (Dutton)
• Edward O. Wilson for “The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth” (W.W. Norton)
Lots of good material here… so little time. I particularly want to read Chaplin’s and Kandel’s but the others look so good too. More about the complete list in all nine categories can be found there, and on the LA Times’ own site.
I don’t know if I’ll be dressing up and reporting to you on the glitzy Award/Prize ceremony, as I did last year, but it will be interesting to watch for the results in any case. More importantly, don’t forget the annual book fair weekend.
-cvj
I agree with your constructive criticism [#3] of my post [#2].
I was remiss in not clarifying that I have read several, but certainly not all of the Eric Kandel papers since I became aware of his work in 1997.
At the very least I should have provided one sample of his work and that would easily be his Nobel Lecture 2000 ‘The Molecular Biology of Memory Storage: A Dialog between Genes and Synapses’.
This is availble on video [59 minutes] and PDF text [7.27 MB] at the Nobel website.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2000/kandel-lecture.html
I will probably pick up Wilson’s book. IMHO sociobiology got a bad rap from liberals who did not like the implications of the field to the nature vs. nurture debate. And this is from someone who is slightly left of Hugo Chavez. I think that science is science and if it is correct it should not be disparaged because it doesn’t meet a political litmus test. We see the opposite in the present adminstration’s failure to acknowledge climate change (until beat over the head with the evidence) stem cell research, etc. But the left was guilty in this case. That being said, I think Wilson is very concerned about the future of our planet and I am interested in what he has to say.
Elliot
Eric Kandel is remarkable for many reasons – one particularly nice thing about him is that, in a conversation, he makes you feel as if you are the most important and interesting person he could possibly be talking to. He doesn’t do this in an ostentatious way, you just come away from the conversation feeling much much better about yourself.
I feel that this trait must be very sought after in politicians (somehow I imagine Clinton must have it in spades) but it is very rare, in my experience, to find it a senior scientist. The only other person that comes to my mind is Leon Lederman.
Sure, he has a Nobel Prize, but that alone does not qualify someone to write a good book. I’m always a bit wary of that sort of line of reasoning, so forgive me for speaking up, especially since based on what I recall of him (and have heard said of him as a thinker and teacher) from hanging out quite a lot with Princeton and Columbia Biologists in my postdoc days (and later), I agree that it will indeed likely be an excellent read.
Cheers,
-cvj
As a recipient of ‘The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2000’ Eric R Kandel should be an excellent read.
It is also broadcast on CSPAN (with rebroadcasts) which helps those of us so far away from LA; really one of the better Book Festivals in the world.