“And then she did not live to see it through, so that’s why I wanted to dedicate the book to her. “She came back with a torrent of suggestions,” Isaacson recalled. Mayhew knew the science well because, in 1979, she edited Horace Freeland Judson’s “ The Eighth Day of Creation,” which Isaacson called “the classic of the genre.” In December 2019, he sent Mayhew a draft of his own book. She urged me not to make this a science textbook but a human detective story in which colorful characters enjoy the thrill of discovery.” He went on: “Instead, Alice said, yes, it’s the greatest journey of discovery you could do. “When I came to Alice and said, I want to do a book about this little-known scientist with a hard-to-pronounce last name who’s developed a system with an acronym that people don’t know what it stands for, I thought she would balk,” said the veteran author in a phone interview where he was cordially miffed by my confession of lifelong nightmares about the periodic table.

But on the dedication page are two bright lights from the publishing solar system: Carolyn Reidy, longtime head of Simon & Schuster, and Alice Mayhew, who was Isaacson’s editor for 40 years. The star of the book is Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who helped invent CRISPR, a revolutionary gene-editing tool that has played a role in the fight against Covid-19.

2 in its second week on the hardcover nonfiction list. For many readers, these pages are like a peek inside a master chef’s spice cabinet they hint at influences on the person who is about to host a pop-up buffet in your brain.Ĭonsider Walter Isaacson’s latest opus, “ The Code Breaker,” which is now No. FINE PRINT Voracious bibliophiles have a funny habit of grazing the fine print - dedication, epigraph and acknowledgments - before tucking into the main course of a book.

Jennifer doudna the code breaker