The Code Breaker
A scientific biography of Jennifer Doudna, a founder and co-developer of the CRISPR gene-editing mechanism, and an examination of what happened after CRISPR hit the marketplace.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
15mentions
15people
2021–2026years
60% recommend33% neutral7% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Walter Isaacson's book "The Code Breaker" is about this subject. I couldn't put it down.
- Cue the book "The Code Breaker" [0]. I read it a long time ago and such an incredible book and journey by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuel Charpentier. Do check it out
- An excellent gauge for how good a book is can be found in how many times you catch yourself thinking back on it even after some time has passed. Through this, my favorite this entire year is The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank's diary). Without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read, just through how supremely human it is.
Other books are:
-The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson
-Sapiens by Yuval Yuval Noah Harari
-21 Lessons for the 21st Century
-Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feyn man!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
-Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
-Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
- If you're interested in learning more, the book Code Breaker is a great background to some of the steps that were taken to get us to where we are today! This work has been decades in the making :)
- Walter Isaacson's The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race. Reading about how the Crispr and mRNA vaccine development happened was gripping.
- A few books I enjoyed:
- The Case against Education by Bryan Caplan, discussing the merits of signalling theory (the point of education is to signal your intelligence and conscientiousness) as opposed to human capital theory (education genuinely makes you a better worker with more skills). Didn't find it totally convincing but it was a fun and interesting read.
- The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality by Kathryn Harden, a wonderful book on how hereditary IQ is, and why that is a good case for redistribution, given that IQ is so predictive of wealth/income
- The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson, a biography of Jennifer Doudna, the woman who founded CRISPR and won the Nobel prize. Great read, thrilling.
- My Struggle book 1, by Karl Ove Knausgård. Haven't finished this yet, just started it a few days ago - about 300 pages in. Great, great novel, one of the best I've read in a while.
