Aaron Klug Biography review

(On my Amazon bit)

I had seen Aaron Klug on the YouTube Web of Stories channel and clip where he, I felt, ungraciously commented on the R&D of X-ray tomography. To be fair his interviewer was egging him on & even commented, along the lines: you got the Nobel Prize for something eventually. But I was intrigued.

So on very quickly receiving this book I turned to “Tomography” featuring Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, CAT Scanner genius. At first glance I was disappointed at the author’s view of the great man: “absolutely no idea that Cormack had worked on the same problem” I do not think is accurate going by Cormack’s book (Imagining the elephant), that I have. In that publication the co-Nobel Prize-winner for Tomography points out that he wrote to Sir Godfrey and never heard back and I think speculated on commercial confidentiality being the reason.

Steve Bates who wrote the book about the work at THORN-EMI explained to me that the patent that gave the company great income had to be vague enough not to give the game away but clever enough to catch the competition out & force them to pay royalties.

But back to chapter 13 which concludes with the Radon Transform referenced by Cormack but majors on the Fourier one of Klug and public “bickering” with a group led by Gabor Herman in Buffalo. Such has the benefit of highlighting the benefits of one technique compared to another but the last person I could see joining in would have been Sir Godfrey.

I set about looking for some Maths in the rest of the book but there was only a brief appendix. Part three of the book is entitled Duties & Rewards (fx;skip) and Part one is on Aaron Klug’s background. The latter concludes with his time at Birkbeck & there is a picture of him with Rosalind Franklin. Part two might be the core of the book and if colour Plate 1 is an indication then electron microscopy is important. I got the impression that the DNA story of the TMV virus was key and having watched most of the related Web of stories videos I will save it for a dark winter night.

Incidentally another reviewer recommends following on colleagues of Aaron: Bremner, … Sanger. The former is on Web of stories too but none is an entertaining as Freeman Dyson. I recall his comments on Teller when the nice man mask slipped so I suspect that there is a bit of cut and thrust in molecular biology.

I feel I have been harsh above but I have popped an extra star on.