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Rating: 
Summary: More conversations---Chemical Heritage magazine
Review: During his six-year tenure as Editor-in-Chief of The Chemical Intelligencer, István Hargittai, sometimes with his wife Magdi, interviewed more than 120 eminent scientists, more than half of whom were Nobel laureates....
Hargittai seeks to elicit the stories behind the most important achievements in twentieth-century biomedicine directly from some of their most eminent participants. They tell us about their backgrounds, families and lives, both personal and professional, childhoods (Like me or others of my generation, some had chemistry sets or were inspired by Paul de Kruif¡¦s Microbe Hunters or Sinclair Lewis¡¦ Arrowsmith), influences and career choices, motivations, aspirations, heroes (scientific or otherwise), mentors, hardships and triumphs, philosophies, hobbies and nonscientific interests (several are accomplished musicians), and their seminal discoveries.
Nobel laureates describe how the prize affected their lives, research, and careers. Most are modest and admit the role of luck in their good fortune (Kary B. Mullis is the sole exception). In reply to Hargittai¡¦s serious questions a number of the conversations are laced with humor.
Each interview is prefaced with a biographical sketch and includes one or more portraits of the interviewee, many photographed by Hargittai or his wife. The volume contains 176 illustrations of apparatus, formal and informal group portraits, notebooks, letters, models, commemorative postage stamps, plaques, and drawings. Three of the interviewees are now deceased, underscoring the importance of such oral histories. Several scientists discuss their differences with other scientists and competitors.
On the whole, however, most of the scientists are well acquainted with each other and are mutually supportive, and their names crop up frequently in each other¡¦s interviews. Some offer suggestions as to Nobel-caliber scientists whose candidacy was overlooked.'nAn unusually high proportion of the interviewees (at least 22) are Jewish, so the issues of Judaism, the Holocaust, and anti-Semitism are discussed by many of them.
In his preface Hargittai states, ¡§The science of the second half of the 20th century was dominated by the biomedical fields and this is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. The present selection of interviews gives a cross section covering a broad range of topics, personalities, and circumstances of recording.¡¨ I agree with Hargittai¡¦s assessment and heartily recommend his book, suitable for both complete reading or browsing, to biomedical scientists, biochemists, chemists, historians of chemistry and or science, and general readers interested in the ¡§inside story¡¨ of the workings of 20th century science.
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