Cobb, Matthew – The Bell Bookshop

Crick

Emma — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

‘Cobb is a rare jewel’ Adam RutherfordFrancis Crick was a restless, relentless thinker, as fascinated by Beat poetry and psychedelics as the genetic meaning of life and the inner workings of the brain. Yet for all his drive, he was galvanised by collaboration: with Jim Watson on DNA, with artists in Cambridge and California, and with his wife Odile, who drew the figure of the double helix that illuminated his most famous discovery. It was his debates and conflicts with these collaborators that powered a mind in motion.Meticulously researched and shot through with insight and electrifying detail, Matthew Cobb reveals the man who changed our view of life forever. Crick is the first major biography of one of the twentieth century’s most exciting minds.

The genetic age

Emma — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A TIMES ENVIRONMENT AND SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022’The ideal guide to what is not just a fiendishly complex area of science but also an ethical minefield’ Mail on SundayA new gene editing technology, invented just seven years ago, has turned humanity into gods. Enabling us to manipulate the genes in virtually any organism with exquisite precision, CRISPR has given scientists a degree of control that was undreamt of even in science fiction.But CRISPR is just the latest, giant leap in a long journey to master genetics. The Genetic Age shows the astonishing, world-changing potential of the new genetics and the possible threats it poses, sifting between fantasy and the reality when it comes to both benefits and dangers. By placing each phase of discovery, anticipation and fear in the context of over fifty years of attempts to master the natural world, Matthew Cobb, the Baillie-Gifford-shortlisted author of The Idea of the Brain, weaves the stories of science, history and culture to shed new light on our future. With the powers now at our disposal, it is a future that is almost impossible to imagine – but it is one we will create ourselves.

The Genetic Age

Emma — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A TIMES ENVIRONMENT AND SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022’Brilliant .. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough’ – Henry Marsh, New Statesman (about The Idea of the Brain)A new gene editing technology, invented just seven years ago, has turned humanity into gods. Enabling us to manipulate the genes in virtually any organism with exquisite precision, CRISPR has given scientists a degree of control that was undreamt of even in science fiction.But CRISPR is just the latest, giant leap in a long journey to master genetics. The Genetic Age shows the astonishing, world-changing potential of the new genetics and the possible threats it poses, sifting between fantasy and the reality when it comes to both benefits and dangers. By placing each phase of discovery, anticipation and fear in the context of over fifty years of attempts to master the natural world, Matthew Cobb, the Baillie-Gifford-shortlisted author of The Idea of the Brain, weaves the stories of science, history and culture to shed new light on our future. With the powers now at our disposal, it is a future that is almost impossible to imagine – but it is one we will create ourselves.

The Idea of the Brain

Emma — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford PrizeThis is the story of our quest to understand the most mysterious object in the universe: the human brain.Today we tend to picture it as a computer. Earlier scientists thought about it in their own technological terms: as a telephone switchboard, or a clock, or all manner of fantastic mechanical or hydraulic devices. Could the right metaphor unlock the its deepest secrets once and for all?Galloping through centuries of wild speculation and ingenious, sometimes macabre anatomical investigations, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb reveals how we came to our present state of knowledge. Our latest theories allow us to create artificial memories in the brain of a mouse, and to build AI programmes capable of extraordinary cognitive feats. A complete understanding seems within our grasp.But to make that final breakthrough, we may need a radical new approach. At every step of our quest, Cobb shows that it was new ideas that brought illumination. Where, he asks, might the next one come from? What will it be?