LIVES OF A BIOLOGIST: Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science

This charming and unduly modest book is part memoir, part distillation of 20th-century biology, as told by an eminent researcher, writer and teacher who witnessed much of it firsthand. Bonner (Morphology), a former Princeton University developmental biologist and lifelong devotee of cellular slime molds, invokes life cycles and development, his specialties, to talk about the last century's gigantic steps forward in biology. He covers advances in biochemistry, population genetics and embryology; the discovery of DNA structure; and the human genome project. Against this parade of discoveries, Bonner considers his own career, which included studying everything from animal social behavior to evolution. (May)