Immunity: How Elie Metchnikoff Changed the Course of Modern Medicine

  • Luba Vikhanski
Chicago Review Press (2016) 9781613731109 | ISBN: 978-1-6137-3110-9

In 1882, Russian zoologist Elie Metchnikoff discovered the mechanics of natural immunity while experimenting on starfish larvae. Physician Jules Rochard called his theory an “oriental fairy tale”, yet it won Metchnikoff a share in a Nobel prize decades later. As journalist Luba Vikhanski reveals in this engrossing scientific biography, the gifted Metchnikoff's breakthroughs extended to invertebrate embryology, treatments for syphilis and pioneering research on some of today's hottest topics in biology: the microbiome, probiotics and longevity.

Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions at Fifty

Edited by:
  • Robert J. Richards &
  • Lorraine Daston
University of Chicago Press (2016) 9780226317038 | ISBN: 978-0-2263-1703-8

Few books leave a wake like physicist-turned-historian Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962; see D. Kaiser Nature 484, 164–166; 2012). These essays on that classic, edited by science historians Robert Richards and Lorraine Daston, emanate from a 2012 commemorative conference. It's a scholarly treat, from George Reisch probing the cold-war roots of Kuhn's provocations on dogma, to David Kaiser tracing the experimental psychology in his philosophical claims.

Wattana: An Orangutan in Paris

Chris Herzfeld, translated by Oliver Y. Martin and Robert D. Martin. University of Chicago Press (2016)

9780226168593

For this thoughtful, unusual study of the human–ape 'interface', philosopher of science Chris Herzfeld focuses on a captive orang-utan, one of less than 1,000 worldwide. Zoo-born Wattana, given string, cloth and paper at the Jardin des Plantes menagerie in Paris, made elaborate knots and 'necklaces' — a skilful use of fibre unsurprising in a tree-dwelling primate that builds complex nests, yet so far seen only in captivity. A trove of gripping research, somewhat marred by its scattershot presentation.

The Tyrannosaur Chronicles: The Biology of the Tyrant Dinosaurs

  • David Hone
Bloomsbury Sigma (2016) 9781472911254 | ISBN: 978-1-4729-1125-4

Weighing some 6 tonnes and sporting ranks of formidable serrated teeth, the tyrannosaur has bitten into the human imagination like no other creature from the Cretaceous period ending 66 million years ago. Luckily for its devotees, the fevered pace of palaeontology means that findings on 30 or so species of tyrant dinosaur are piling up fast. Ecologist David Hone's primer lays out the facts and educated guesses, from the beasts' near-global distribution to their taxonomy, anatomy, reproduction, behaviour and spectacular looks, possibly enhanced by a “mosaic” of scales, feathers and keratin folds.

The Tree Climber's Guide: Adventures in the Urban Canopy

  • Jack Cooke
HarperCollins (2016) 9780008153915 | ISBN: 978-0-0081-5391-5

Nature writing has focused mainly on the terrestrial, and sometimes the marine. With Jack Cooke's guide, it just got arboreal. An ebullient tree-climber, evoking the hominin connection to canopy life even as he mourns humanity's lack of “biaxial ball-and-socket wrist joints”, Cooke exults in the sensory thrill of being aloft. But his tour of London's trees, from cedar of Lebanon to common lime, is less about racing to the top than remapping the city to reconnect us with the extraordinary worlds above our heads.