THE nature of scientific celebrity is such that Elizabeth Blackburn made more headlines for being sacked from the Bush administration’s bioethics council than for discovering telomerase, for which she has been tipped for Nobel laurels. She rose to the top in a male-dominated world by adopting “protective coloration” and putting science first. This admiring biography documents her achievements and refusal to compromise her scientific integrity, but Brady has a tough task in bringing to life a woman who shuns self-promotion.
Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres
MIT Press