Books in Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Series series

From the 1920s when he watched his father, a general practitioner who made housecalls and wrote his prescriptions in Latin, to his days in medical school and beyond, Lewis Thomas saw medicine evolve from an art into a sophisticated science. The Youngest Science is Dr. Thomas's account of his life in the medical profession and an inquiry into what medicine is all about--the youngest science, but one rich in possibility and promise.He chronicles his training in Boston and New York, his war career in the South Pacific, his most impassioned research projects, his work as an administrator in hospitals and medical schools, and even his experiences as a patient. Along the way, Thomas explores the complex relationships between research and practice, between words and meanings, between human error and human accomplishment, More than a magnificent autobiography, The Youngest Science is also a celebration and a warning--about the nature of medicine and about the future life of our planet.

To those interested in a life in science, Sir Peter Medawar, Nobel laureate, deflates the myths of invincibility, superiority, and genius; instead, he demonstrates it is common sense and an inquiring mind that are essential to the scientist's calling. He deflates the myths surrounding scientists—invincibility, superiority, and genius; instead, he argues that it is common sense and an inquiring mind that are essential to the makeup of a scientist. He delivers many wry observations on how to choose a research topic, how to get along wih collaborators and older scientists and administrators, how (and how not) to present a scientific paper, and how to cope with culturally ”superior” specialists in the arts and humanities.

This is a richly absorbing autobiography by the physicist whose hydrogen bubble-chamber experiments won him the 1968 Nobel Prize in his field. Alvarez launches his "adventures" with a gripping description of his participation in (via an observation plane) the Enola Gay's historic mission over Hiroshima in 1945. Personally as well as scientifically forthright and plainspoken, he holds the reader with the story of his life as a scientist, much of the time at Berkeley, Calif., working with such men as Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and Enrico Fermi. Central to this account is the picture of life at Los Alamos climaxed by the first A-bomb test in 1945. But subsequent episodes describing work in small-particle physics, capped by a recent switch to "impact" theory that explains the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago, are equal highlights. Photos.

The experience of separation and the ensuing susceptibility to anxiety, anger, and fear constitute the flip side of the attachment phenomenon. In an authoritative new foreword to Bowlby’s classic study, Stephen Mitchell (who gives resonant voice to the relational perspective in psychoanalysis) bridges the distance between attachment theory and the psychoanalytic tradition.