Watson presents his and his colleague Francis Crick’s accomplishment at the expense of another researcher, Rosalind Franklin, who haunts the backstage of The Code Breaker. In her sixth-grade year, her father gave her a copy of The Double Helix, James Watson’s chronicle of the race to discover the structure of DNA. The daughter of a literature professor, she grew up in Hilo, Hawai’i, where she roamed the Big Island’s volcanic slopes and lush hollows, wondering why hilahila grass would curl when she touched it. Like Curie before her, Doudna has carved her own path. The Code Breaker is panoramic in scope and yet a page-turner, reminiscent of The Hot Zone and Hidden Valley Road. “There are three great revolutions of our lifetimes: physics, digital, and now the life sciences,” he says, explaining his shift to Doudna as subject. Isaacson, the doyen of American journalism and a Renaissance-style artist in his own right, pivots off acclaimed biographies of Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs to portray the first woman in his gallery of big ideas. Walter Isaacson’s The Code Breaker (Simon & Schuster) showcases another Nobel prize winner, Jennifer Doudna, PhD, whose pioneering work echoes Curie’s: CRISPR technology, an RNA-based form of gene editing, will enrich us for decades to come.
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