Category: Thinking Turf

Book Review: The Double Helix by James D. Watson

Pooja Kashyap

The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA is an autobiographical version of James D. Watson in the race for DNA. The story of the discovery of the structure of DNA is quite a read but I feel really sorry for Rosalind Franklin. Without her contribution, the men (James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins) wouldn’t have received the Nobel Prize. Defaming her and other women under the hood of casual misogyny in almost entirety of the book is deeply unsettling. And by shedding…

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Book Review: A Crack in Creation by Jennifer A Doudna and Samuel H Sternberg

Pooja Kashyap

A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution is a powerful book on advances in gene editing research and history by Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg. It puts forward the timeline of a genome-editing tool known as CRISPR, or “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.” The book starts with examples where natural changes in the genome lead to randomly cure patients of genetic diseases. 2013 was the year of medical mystery at the National Institutes of Health, when the scientists were dealing with…

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Book Review: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari

Pooja Kashyap

Dataism is the new religion! – is the motif running across Harari’s Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. As with its predecessor, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, the book deals with evolution and the abilities that humans acquire as we move along the evolutionary scale. And how we process these capabilities only to fabricate a world where there is no place for us.

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Book Review: The God Equation by Dr. Michio Kaku

Pooja Kashyap

Dr. Michio Kaku is a well-known figure in science academia. He is a master story teller. His super power is, he can make science graspable for non-science people like myself. In The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything, Dr. Kaku talks about three things: physics from creation to present, the effort put behind in unifying all known physical forces and the theory of dimensions, string theory.

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Book Review: In His Own Words by Nelson Mandela

Pooja Kashyap

In His Own Words: From Freedom To The Future: Tributes And Speeches by Nelson Mandela is one of those books, which everyone must read once in their life time. Nelson Mandela was, indeed, a prolific writer as well as a gifted speaker. He became an epitome of freedom around the world after his South African history in 1994. I have always looked up to him for his patience, diligence and integrity.

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Book Review: Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins

Pooja Kashyap

Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science is the second volume of Richard Dawkins’ memoirs, first being An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist. As expected, the autobiographical memoir is not a chronological tale, rather it is a series of anecdotes. In fact, Dawkins writes, “If you don’t like digressive anecdotes, you might find you’re reading the wrong book.”

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Book Review: A World Beyond Physics by Stuart A. Kauffman

Pooja Kashyap

Stuart Alan Kauffman is not only a complex-systems researcher but he is also a polymath, with a degree in medicine and training in biochemistry, genetics, physics, philosophy and other fields. Very deftly he roams across disciplinary boundaries looking for answers to the riddles that obsess him. In, A World Beyond Physics, he takes up the conundrum of life’s origin.

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Book Review: The Emergent Multiverse by David Wallace

Pooja Kashyap

The Emergent Multiverse: Quantum Theory According to the Everett Interpretation is an effort on the part of David Wallace to vindicate Hugh Everett’s idea of many worlds.   The concept of multiverse was initially taken seriously in philosophy than in physics. May be because in physics the idea came much later, that is, with the emergence of quantum mechanics.

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Book Review: Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Pooja Kashyap

Homosapiens a.k.a we humans are the dominant specie today because we can create mythologies and tell stories. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari is an interesting read, where the author interweaves science and the humanities together to make us see where we have reached today from once being the hunter gatherers.

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