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Radium and the Secret of Life
Luis A. Campos
€ 94.05
€ 78.49
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Description for Radium and the Secret of Life
Hardcover. Before the hydrogen bomb indelibly associated radioactivity with death, many chemists, physicians, botanists, and geneticists believed that radium might hold the secret to life. This book recovers a forgotten history of the connections between radioactivity and the life sciences that existed long before the dawn of molecular biology. Num Pages: 352 pages, 14 halftones. BIC Classification: PNK; PSB. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 164 x 240 x 31. Weight in Grams: 700.
Before the hydrogen bomb indelibly associated radioactivity with death, many chemists, physicians, botanists, and geneticists believed that radium might hold the secret to life. Physicists and chemists early on described the wondrous new element in lifelike terms such as "decay" and "half-life," and made frequent references to the "natural selection" and "evolution" of the elements. Meanwhile, biologists of the period used radium in experiments aimed at elucidating some of the most basic phenomena of life, including metabolism and mutation. From the creation of half-living microbes in the test tube to charting the earliest histories of genetic engineering, Radium and the ... Read more
Before the hydrogen bomb indelibly associated radioactivity with death, many chemists, physicians, botanists, and geneticists believed that radium might hold the secret to life. Physicists and chemists early on described the wondrous new element in lifelike terms such as "decay" and "half-life," and made frequent references to the "natural selection" and "evolution" of the elements. Meanwhile, biologists of the period used radium in experiments aimed at elucidating some of the most basic phenomena of life, including metabolism and mutation. From the creation of half-living microbes in the test tube to charting the earliest histories of genetic engineering, Radium and the ... Read more
Product Details
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2015
Publisher
University Of Chicago Press
Condition
New
Number of Pages
352
Place of Publication
, United States
ISBN
9780226238272
SKU
V9780226238272
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-50
About Luis A. Campos
Luis A. Campos is associate professor of the history of science at the University of New Mexico.
Reviews for Radium and the Secret of Life
"Radium and the Secret of Life probes the experimental and metaphorical connections between transmutation and mutation. As that coupling makes clear, it was a book waiting to be written. Campos provides a deeply researched, engagingly written, and provocatively argued history of this potent conjunction and how it disintegrated so fully as to be nearly forgotten." (Angela N. H. Creager, author ... Read more