The Molecular Vision Of Life

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The Molecular Vision of Life

Author : Lily E. Kay
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0195111435
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (951 download)

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Book Synopsis The Molecular Vision of Life by : Lily E. Kay

Download or read book The Molecular Vision of Life written by Lily E. Kay and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1993 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating study examines the rise of American molecular biology to disciplinary dominance, focusing on the period between 1930 and the elucidation of DNA structure in the mid 1950s. Research undertaken during this period, with its focus on genetic structure and function, endowed scientists with then unprecedented power over life. By viewing the new biology as both a scientific and cultural enterprise, Lily E. Kay shows that the growth of molecular biology was a result of systematic efforts by key scientists and their sponsors to direct the development of biological research toward a shared vision of science and society. She analyzes the motivations and mechanisms empowering this vision by focusing on two key institutions: Caltech and its sponsor, the Rockefeller Foundation. Her study explores a number of vital, sometimes controversial topics, among them the role of private power centers in shaping scientific agenda, and the political dimensions of "pure" research. It also advances a sobering argument: the cognitive and social groundwork for genetic engineering and human genome projects was laid by the American architects of molecular biology during these early decades of the project. This book will be of interest to molecular biologists, historians, sociologists, and the general reader alike.

Who Wrote the Book of Life?

Author : Lily E. Kay
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804734172
Total Pages : 476 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (341 download)

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Book Synopsis Who Wrote the Book of Life? by : Lily E. Kay

Download or read book Who Wrote the Book of Life? written by Lily E. Kay and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a detailed history of one of the most important and dramatic episodes in modern science, recounted from the novel vantage point of the dawn of the information age and its impact on representations of nature, heredity, and society. Drawing on archives, published sources, and interviews, the author situates work on the genetic code (1953-70) within the history of life science, the rise of communication technosciences (cybernetics, information theory, and computers), the intersection of molecular biology with cryptanalysis and linguistics, and the social history of postwar Europe and the United States. Kay draws out the historical specificity in the process by which the central biological problem of DNA-based protein synthesis came to be metaphorically represented as an information code and a writing technologyand consequently as a book of life. This molecular writing and reading is part of the cultural production of the Nuclear Age, its power amplified by the centuries-old theistic resonance of the book of life metaphor. Yet, as the author points out, these are just metaphors: analogies, not ontologies. Necessary and productive as they have been, they have their epistemological limitations. Deploying analyses of language, cryptology, and information theory, the author persuasively argues that, technically speaking, the genetic code is not a code, DNA is not a language, and the genome is not an information system (objections voiced by experts as early as the 1950s). Thus her historical reconstruction and analyses also serve as a critique of the new genomic biopower. Genomic textuality has become a fact of life, a metaphor literalized, she claims, as human genome projects promise new levels of control over life through the meta-level of information: control of the word (the DNA sequences) and its editing and rewriting. But the author shows how the humbling limits of these scriptural metaphors also pose a challenge to the textual and material mastery of the genomic book of life.

The Black Box of Biology

Author : Michel Morange
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674281365
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis The Black Box of Biology by : Michel Morange

Download or read book The Black Box of Biology written by Michel Morange and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this masterful account, a historian of science surveys the molecular biology revolution, its origin and continuing impact. Since the 1930s, a molecular vision has been transforming biology. Michel Morange provides an incisive and overarching history of this transformation, from the early attempts to explain organisms by the structure of their chemical components, to the birth and consolidation of genetics, to the latest technologies and discoveries enabled by the new science of life. Morange revisits A History of Molecular Biology and offers new insights from the past twenty years into his analysis. The Black Box of Biology shows that what led to the incredible transformation of biology was not a simple accumulation of new results, but the molecularization of a large part of biology. In fact, Morange argues, the greatest biological achievements of the past few decades should still be understood within the molecular paradigm. What has happened is not the displacement of molecular biology by other techniques and avenues of research, but rather the fusion of molecular principles and concepts with those of other disciplines, including genetics, physics, structural chemistry, and computational biology. This has produced decisive changes, including the discoveries of regulatory RNAs, the development of massive scientific programs such as human genome sequencing, and the emergence of synthetic biology, systems biology, and epigenetics. Original, persuasive, and breathtaking in its scope, The Black Box of Biology sets a new standard for the history of the ongoing molecular revolution.

Introduction to Molecular Biology, Genomics and Proteomics for Biomedical Engineers

Author : Robert B. Northrop
Publisher : CRC Press
ISBN 13 : 1420061216
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Introduction to Molecular Biology, Genomics and Proteomics for Biomedical Engineers by : Robert B. Northrop

Download or read book Introduction to Molecular Biology, Genomics and Proteomics for Biomedical Engineers written by Robert B. Northrop and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2008-10-28 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrates the Complex Biochemical Relations that Permit Life to Exist It can be argued that the dawn of the 21st century has emerged as the age focused on molecular biology, which includes all the regulatory mechanisms that make cellular biochemical reaction pathways stable and life possible. For biomedical engineers, this concept is essential to their chosen profession. Introduction to Molecular Biology, Genomics, and Proteomics for Biomedical Engineers hones in on the specialized organic molecules in living organisms and how they interact and react. The book’s sound approach to this intricately complex field makes it an exceptional resource for further exploration into the biochemistry, molecular biology, and genomics fields. It is also beneficial for electrical, chemical, and civil engineers as well as biophysicists with an interest in modeling living systems. This seminal reference includes many helpful tools for self study, including— 143 illustrations, 32 in color, to bolster understanding of complex biochemical relations 20 tables for quick access to precise data 100 key equations Challenging self-study problems within each chapter Conveys Human Progress in the Manipulation of Genomes at the Molecular Level In response to growing global interest in biotechnology, this valuable text sheds light on the evolutionary theories and future trends in genetic medicine and stem cell research. It provides a broader knowledge base on life-permitting complexities, illustrates how to model them quantitatively, and demonstrates how to manipulate them in genomic-based medicine and genetic engineering. Consequently, this book allows for a greater appreciation among of the incredible complexity of the biochemical systems required to sustain life in its many forms. A solutions manual is available for instructors wishing to convert this reference to classroom use.

Private Science

Author : Arnold Thackray
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 9780812234282
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (342 download)

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Book Synopsis Private Science by : Arnold Thackray

Download or read book Private Science written by Arnold Thackray and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1998-01-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private Science is a contribution to that debate, focusing particularly on the relationships among corporations, universities, and national governments involved in biotechnological research.

Membranes to Molecular Machines

Author : Mathias Grote
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022662515X
Total Pages : 307 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (266 download)

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Book Synopsis Membranes to Molecular Machines by : Mathias Grote

Download or read book Membranes to Molecular Machines written by Mathias Grote and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today's science tells us that our bodies are filled with molecular machinery that orchestrates all sorts of life processes. When we think, microscopic "channels" open and close in our brain cell membranes; when we run, tiny "motors" spin in our muscle cell membranes; and when we see, light operates "molecular switches" in our eyes and nerves. A molecular-mechanical vision of life has become commonplace in both the halls of philosophy and the offices of drug companies, where researchers are developing “proton pump inhibitors” or medicines similar to Prozac. Membranes to Molecular Machines explores just how late twentieth-century science came to think of our cells and bodies this way. This story is told through the lens of membrane research, an unwritten history at the crossroads of molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, and the neurosciences, that directly feeds into today's synthetic biology as well as nano- and biotechnology. Mathias Grote shows how these sciences not only have made us think differently about life, they have, by reworking what membranes and proteins represent in laboratories, allowed us to manipulate life as "active matter" in new ways. Covering the science of biological membranes in the United States and Europe from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, this book connects that history to contemporary work with optogenetics, a method for stimulating individual neurons using light, and will enlighten and provoke anyone interested in the intersection of chemical research and the life sciences—from practitioner to historian to philosopher.

The Lives of a Cell

Author : Lewis Thomas
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101667052
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lives of a Cell by : Lewis Thomas

Download or read book The Lives of a Cell written by Lewis Thomas and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1978-02-23 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things. Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs, language, music, death, insects, and medicine. Lewis Thomas writes, "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us."

Programmed Visions

Author : Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262294613
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (622 download)

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Book Synopsis Programmed Visions by : Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

Download or read book Programmed Visions written by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-04-29 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A theoretical examination of the surprising emergence of software as a guiding metaphor for our neoliberal world. New media thrives on cycles of obsolescence and renewal: from celebrations of cyber-everything to Y2K, from the dot-com bust to the next big things—mobile mobs, Web 3.0, cloud computing. In Programmed Visions, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun argues that these cycles result in part from the ways in which new media encapsulates a logic of programmability. New media proliferates “programmed visions,” which seek to shape and predict—even embody—a future based on past data. These programmed visions have also made computers, based on metaphor, metaphors for metaphor itself, for a general logic of substitutability. Chun argues that the clarity offered by software as metaphor should make us pause, because software also engenders a profound sense of ignorance: who knows what lurks behind our smiling interfaces, behind the objects we click and manipulate? The combination of what can be seen and not seen, known (knowable) and not known—its separation of interface from algorithm and software from hardware—makes it a powerful metaphor for everything we believe is invisible yet generates visible, logical effects, from genetics to the invisible hand of the market, from ideology to culture.

The Black Box of Biology

Author : Michel Morange
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674245253
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis The Black Box of Biology by : Michel Morange

The Molecular Switch

Author : Rob Phillips
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691200246
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis The Molecular Switch by : Rob Phillips

Download or read book The Molecular Switch written by Rob Phillips and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A signature feature of living organisms is their ability to carry out purposeful actions by taking stock of the world around them. To that end, cells have an arsenal of signaling molecules linked together in signaling pathways, which switch between inactive and active conformations. The Molecular Switch articulates a biophysical perspective on signaling, showing how allostery—a powerful explanation of how molecules function across all biological domains—can be reformulated using equilibrium statistical mechanics, applied to diverse biological systems exhibiting switching behaviors, and successfully unify seemingly unrelated phenomena. Rob Phillips weaves together allostery and statistical mechanics via a series of biological vignettes, each of which showcases an important biological question and accompanying physical analysis. Beginning with the study of ligand-gated ion channels and their role in problems ranging from muscle action to vision, Phillips then undertakes increasingly sophisticated case studies, from bacterial chemotaxis and quorum sensing to hemoglobin and its role in mammalian physiology. He looks at G-protein coupled receptors as well as the role of allosteric molecules in gene regulation. Phillips concludes by surveying problems in biological fidelity and offering a speculative chapter on the relationship between allostery and biological Maxwell demons. Appropriate for graduate students and researchers in biophysics, physics, engineering, biology, and neuroscience, The Molecular Switch presents a unified, quantitative model for describing biological signaling phenomena.

Biotech

Author : Eric J. Vettel
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 081222051X
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Biotech by : Eric J. Vettel

Download or read book Biotech written by Eric J. Vettel and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seemingly unlimited reach of powerful biotechnologies and the attendant growth of the multibillion-dollar industry have raised difficult questions about the scientific discoveries, political assumptions, and cultural patterns that gave rise to for-profit biological research. Given such extraordinary stakes, a history of the commercial biotechnology industry must inquire far beyond the predictable attention to scientists, discovery, and corporate sales. It must pursue how something so complex as the biotechnology industry was born, poised to become both a vanguard for contemporary world capitalism and a focal point for polemic ethical debate. In Biotech, Eric J. Vettel chronicles the story behind genetic engineering, recombinant DNA, cloning, and stem-cell research. It is a story about the meteoric rise of government support for scientific research during the Cold War, about activists and student protesters in the Vietnam era pressing for a new purpose in science, about politicians creating policy that alters the course of science, and also about the release of powerful entrepreneurial energies in universities and in venture capital that few realized existed. Most of all, it is a story about people—not just biologists but also followers and opponents who knew nothing about the biological sciences yet cared deeply about how biological research was done and how the resulting knowledge was used. Vettel weaves together these stories to illustrate how the biotechnology industry was born in the San Francisco Bay area, examining the anomalies, ironies, and paradoxes that contributed to its rise. Culled from oral histories, university records, and private corporate archives, including Cetus, the world's first biotechnology company, this compelling history shows how a cultural and political revolution in the 1960s resulted in a new scientific order: the practical application of biological knowledge supported by private investors expecting profitable returns eclipsed basic research supported by government agencies.

Rendering Life Molecular

Author : Natasha Myers
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 082237563X
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis Rendering Life Molecular by : Natasha Myers

Download or read book Rendering Life Molecular written by Natasha Myers and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-07 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are living bodies made of? Protein modelers tell us that our cells are composed of millions of proteins, intricately folded molecular structures on the scale of nanoparticles. Proteins twist and wriggle as they carry out the activities that keep cells alive. Figuring out how to make these unruly substances visible, tangible, and workable is a challenging task, one that is not readily automated, even by the fastest computers. Natasha Myers explores what protein modelers must do to render three-dimensional, atomic-resolution models of these lively materials. Rendering Life Molecular shows that protein models are not just informed by scientific data: model building entangles a modeler’s entire sensorium, and modelers must learn to feel their way through the data in order to interpret molecular forms. Myers takes us into protein modeling laboratories and classrooms, tracking how gesture, affect, imagination, and intuition shape practices of objectivity. Asking, ‘What is life becoming in modelers' hands?’ she tunes into the ways they animate molecules through their moving bodies and other media. In the process she amplifies an otherwise muted liveliness inflecting mechanistic accounts of the stuff of life.

The Molecularisation of Security

Author : Christopher Long
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000442802
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis The Molecularisation of Security by : Christopher Long

Download or read book The Molecularisation of Security written by Christopher Long and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the way that the molecular sciences are shaping contemporary security practices in relation to the governance of biological threats. In response to biological threats, such as pandemics and bioterrorism, governments around the world have developed a range of new security technologies, called medical countermeasures, to protect their populations. This book argues that the molecular sciences’ influence has been so great that security practices have been molecularised. Focusing on the actions of international organisations and governments in the past two decades, this book identifies two contrasting conceptions of the nature or inherent workings of molecular life as driving this turn. On the one hand, political notions of insecurity have been shaped by the contingent or random nature of molecular life. On the other, the identification of molecular life’s constant biological dynamics supports and makes possible the development and stockpiling of effective medical countermeasures. This study is one of the few to take seriously the conceptual implications that the detailed empirical workings of biotechnology have on security practices today. This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, bio-politics, life sciences, global governance, and International Relations in general.

Oxygen

Author : Nick Lane
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780198607830
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Oxygen by : Nick Lane

Download or read book Oxygen written by Nick Lane and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxygen offers fresh perspectives on our own lives and deaths, explaining modern killer diseases, why we age, and what we can do about it. Advancing revelatory new ideas, following chains of evidence, the book ranges through many disciplines, from environmental sciences to molecular medicine. Damage to DNA caused by oxidative stress appears to explain aging and many of its diseases, hence the popularity in alternative health circles of antioxidants. But antioxidants alone fail to prevent aging. Lane suggests two different avenues of study: modulation of the immune system, which generates free radicals as part of its defense against infectious diseases; and ways of improving the health of our cellular mitochondria, on which many age-related ailments seem to depend. Provocative and complexly argued. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Molecular Feminisms

Author : Deboleena Roy
Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295744111
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (957 download)

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Book Synopsis Molecular Feminisms by : Deboleena Roy

Download or read book Molecular Feminisms written by Deboleena Roy and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2018-11-10 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: �Should feminists clone?� �What do neurons think about?� �How can we learn from bacterial writing?� These provocative questions have haunted neuroscientist and molecular biologist Deboleena Roy since her early days of research when she was conducting experiments on an in vitro cell line using molecular biology techniques. An expert natural scientist as well as an intrepid feminist theorist, Roy takes seriously the expressive capabilities of biological �objects��such as bacteria and other human, nonhuman, organic, and inorganic actants�in order to better understand processes of becoming. She also suggests that renewed interest in matter and materiality in feminist theory must be accompanied by new feminist approaches that work with the everyday, nitty-gritty research methods and techniques in the natural sciences. By practicing science as feminism at the lab bench, Roy creates an interdisciplinary conversation between molecular biology, Deleuzian philosophies, science and technology studies, feminist theory, posthumanism, and postcolonial and decolonial studies. In Molecular Feminisms she brings insights from feminist and cultural theory together with lessons learned from the capabilities and techniques of bacteria, subcloning, and synthetic biology to o er tools for how we might approach nature anew. In the process she demonstrates that learning how to see the world around us is also always about learning how to encounter that world.

A History of Molecular Biology

Author : Michel Morange
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674001695
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis A History of Molecular Biology by : Michel Morange

Download or read book A History of Molecular Biology written by Michel Morange and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day it seems the media focus on yet another new development in biology--gene therapy, the human genome project, the creation of new varieties of animals and plants through genetic engineering. These possibilities have all emanated from molecular biology. A History of Molecular Biology is a complete but compact account for a general readership of the history of this revolution. Michel Morange, himself a molecular biologist, takes us from the turn-of-the-century convergence of molecular biology's two progenitors, genetics and biochemistry, to the perfection of gene splicing and cloning techniques in the 1980s. Drawing on the important work of American, English, and French historians of science, Morange describes the major discoveries--the double helix, messenger RNA, oncogenes, DNA polymerase--but also explains how and why these breakthroughs took place. The book is enlivened by mini-biographies of the founders of molecular biology: Delbrück, Watson and Crick, Monod and Jacob, Nirenberg. This ambitious history covers the story of the transformation of biology over the last one hundred years; the transformation of disciplines: biochemistry, genetics, embryology, and evolutionary biology; and, finally, the emergence of the biotechnology industry. An important contribution to the history of science, A History of Molecular Biology will also be valued by general readers for its clear explanations of the theory and practice of molecular biology today. Molecular biologists themselves will find Morange's historical perspective critical to an understanding of what is at stake in current biological research.

The Optics of Life

Author : Sonke Johnsen
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 140084066X
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis The Optics of Life by : Sonke Johnsen

Download or read book The Optics of Life written by Sonke Johnsen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-19 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Optics--a field of physics focusing on the study of light--is also central to many areas of biology, including vision, ecology, botany, animal behavior, neurobiology, and molecular biology. The Optics of Life introduces the fundamentals of optics to biologists and nonphysicists, giving them the tools they need to successfully incorporate optical measurements and principles into their research. Sönke Johnsen starts with the basics, describing the properties of light and the units and geometry of measurement. He then explores how light is created and propagates and how it interacts with matter, covering topics such as absorption, scattering, fluorescence, and polarization. Johnsen also provides a tutorial on how to measure light as well as an informative discussion of quantum mechanics. The Optics of Life features a host of examples drawn from nature and everyday life, and several appendixes that offer further practical guidance for researchers. This concise book uses a minimum of equations and jargon, explaining the basic physics of light in a succinct and lively manner. It is the essential primer for working biologists and for anyone seeking an accessible introduction to optics. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.