Year: 1978
Type: book-review
Abstract: This is a very unusual book being part autobiographical, part scientific, part philosophical, and even at times meta- physical.James Austin is a distinguished neurologist whose work on the identification of sulphatides, at first in the neurones and later in the urine of patients with metachromatic leucodys- trophy, and also the inherited metabolic deficiency in Krabbe's globoid cell leucodystrophy, is well known.It is the description of how this work came about that is so interesting, particularly to the reviewer who must have been present at the meeting when Denny Brown had an argument with Joe Foley which started the young Austin on a train of thought and study which eventually led him into this complex field of research.I cannot have had the same perception because I do not remember this occasion particularly among many similar interesting exchanges at that time.However, the discussion started off for the author what is the whole theme of the bookserendipity.This word, little used in England before a recent very popular radio programme, can be defined in many ways, but applied to research it consists of taking full advantage of chance happenings to further the pro- gress of knowledge.Pasteur said that fortune favoured the prepared mind, and this remark is often applied to Fleming's discovery of penicillin.Austin also considers that chance is important in research discoveries but only if the mind is well disciplined to appreciate the vital nature of that chance event, and prepared to apply the chance to the creation of a new idea or approach.It is a book very easy to read, even in bed at night, with short chapters which leave you waiting with interest for the next, and there is constant reference to people whom one has known well.That it is of wider interest than just to the doctor is shown by the fact that extracts have appeared in other than the medical press.The book is recommended to the clinician and research worker, and to the non-medical reader who wonders how the research worker works.It is a sort of halfway house between inspi- rational leaping out of the bath shouting Eureka, and the painstaking burning of the midnight oil, but always punctuated by taking advantage of the apple oc- casionally falling on one's head.It will shatter some illusions, but illuminate many others.
Author: J. G. Graham
Institution: Columbia University
Language: English
Subfield: Neurology
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2105481037