Scientific evaluation

Walter Isaacson loves researching and writing about the lives of geniuses. The former Time editor is a biographer par excellence and has profiled subjects ranging from Leonardo Da Vinci to Albert Einstein, and from Steve Jobs to Henry Kissinger.

His latest volume is ostensibly the biography of US scientist Jennifer Doudna, one of the two women who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2020. (Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier was the other recipient and the duo won for their work on CRISPR, the gene editing tool). I use the term “ostensibly” because The Code Breakers is far more than the story of an eminent scientist — it examines the progress in multiple fields of science ranging from biochemistry to gene editing. And while Ms Doudna is the star of the story, it also looks at the contributions and personalities of her teachers, mentors, peers, collaborators and rivals in good detail.

The Code Breaker captures the competitiveness and politics of modern science, and the progress of science in the field of evolution and genetics. It starts from Mendel and Darwin, looks at the work done by James Watson & Francis Crick and then to current research.

Mr Isaacson manages to do justice to a difficult story. It is difficult because it needs to delve deep into the complex science involved to bring out the achievements of its subject.  Unlike the work of Steve Jobs or Leonardo Da Vinci, Ms Doudna’s work is not easy for the average person to comprehend.

Eventually, though, her research could touch far more lives than Apple’s — human gene editing could lead to good outcomes such as eradicating some diseases and terrible ones, such as making designer babies. It raises ethical issues and the world will need to grapple with those as it has had to in every scientific breakthrough from nuclear energy to artificial intelligence.

The book sparkles because Mr Isaacson can put the science in perspective in most cases. Still, this is not a book for the average reader — a certain interest in science, especially basic biology, genetics and chemistry is necessary to appreciate the book fully.

Mr Isaacson deftly balances complex research with the personalities, motivations and eccentricities of the multiple scientists involved. Even though characters from different continents walk in and out of the narrative, he manages to ensure that they are not cardboard characters.

Ms Doudna’s rivals also get plenty of space as does Ms Charpentier, who collaborated with her but, over time, drifted away. As Mr Isaacson admits, many of the people who appear fleetingly in this volume merit their own biographies. He is careful to put their versions of various events, especially where those narratives disagree with 

Ms Doudna’s. But equally, he makes it clear that he has checked out the conflicting versions and believes in Ms Doudna’s version over others.

Scientific research has become far more specialised over the years and a lot more collaboration is required today to make a breakthrough. 

Ms Doudna has had to constantly learn new skills or find partners who specialise in specific areas to make her breakthroughs. Though she is the star, her work would not have reached anywhere without the contributions of dozens of others.

There are fascinating side stories, including that of Watson and Crick on the structure of the DNA. Mr Isaacson focuses on Watson because he had a big influence on Ms Doudna’s life and work. Watson encouraged Ms Doudna from time to time and despite his eccentricities and his later fall from grace, Ms Doudna was always clear how much she admired his scientific thinking. Watson and Crick built on the work of a Rosalind Franklin, who could very well have shared the Nobel they won. Franklin was brilliant and Watson borrowed quite a lot from her X ray crystallographic work. She died young because of cancer and never got enough credit for her breakthroughs. Though Ms Doudna’s decision to focus on her work was influenced by Watson’s book, she finally chose to work on RNA, and not DNA.

Mr Isaacson also brings out the shades of grey in Ms Doudna’s make-up. She is super-competitive and can lobby hard to ensure that her article is published before those of other scientists in the same field. There have been others who have a fair claim to having beaten her in some breakthroughs though she garnered more attention. The race for patents rights of CRISPR was an intense one between Ms Doudna and her team at the University of California, Berkeley, and Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute, MIT, and they were even collaborators briefly before Ms Doudna decided to move away because she did not trust Mr Zhang.

The volume also brings out why the US and Europe (and now China) lead in scientific research.  The freedom to explore ideas and collaborate with brilliant minds and the budgets spent on new research keeps them ahead. These countries have built a self-sustaining ecosystem that attracts brilliant minds and gives them adequate resources and freedom.

There are boring bits too. 

Mr Isaacson’s obsession with Da Vinci and his desire to compare Ms Doudna with the great Italian polymath is grating. Doudna does not need a Da Vinci comparison because her achievement is stunning in itself. But overall, it is a wonderful read — and an important one.