A Great Biography by a Great Author

I was already a big fan of Walter Isaacson, who authored two books that I have discussed here: Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. I like both of them so much that I sought out another of his books, The Code Breaker.

This one was fantastic. Isaacson, who works now at Tulane, hasn't written very many books, and this is the only one about a woman, Jennifer Doudna. His remaining biographies that I haven't read yet are about Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein. Ben Franklin and Henry Kissinger.

What I like about Isaacson's books is that he goes very deep on the backgrounds, and he shares both the good and the bad. I had never really heard of Doudna, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. I was never really into science, but she was. She is known for developing CRSPR technology (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), which became prominent in 2012 and really big during the pandemic (the vaccines).

I learned so much about Steve Jobs and Elon Musk that helped me to better understand them, and I learned that Doudna grew up in Hawaii, which made her feel awkward with her blonde hair and blue eyes. She became interested in science after her father gave her Watson and Crick's book on DNA, The Double Helix, when she was a teen. She had to overcome the bias that many have about women becoming scientists.

While she was initially interested in DNA, her professional development was all about RNA. Kudos to her for everything that she did, and kudos to Isaacson for telling her story so well! It was a long book at almost 500 pages, but the 56 chapters broke up the information nicely.

By the way, this was the first time I have checked out a book on my own in many years. I reserved it online and walked to the new library near our house on Westheimer near Montrose on Monday to get it. All went well! I will continue, though, to pick up books in boxes.