- Title Pages
- Frontispiece
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on the Translation
- Introduction: A Scientist in His Life's Project
-
1 “I Have Never in My Life Felt I Belonged in the Place Where I Lived” -
2 “Stylistically, I'm Best at Irony” -
3 “I Wanted to Study Something That Couldn't Be Used” -
4 “I Have the Feeling That Everything Around Me Is Enveloped in a Mist” -
5 “When I Look at Other Scientists … None of Them Have Wasted as Many Years as I Have” -
6 “Now I Think Nobody Can Keep Me from Becoming a Doctor” -
7 “To Be Able to Let Nature Reflect in the Depths of My Own Soul” -
8 “I Am Branded with Infidelity, and See That Open-Eyed” -
9 “Letters Are a Spiritual Spiderweb in Which You Snare the Dreaming Soul of a Woman” -
10 “The Happiness of Feeling Superior to a Lot of People” -
11 “I Think the Work Has Principal Application to Immunology” -
12 “Antibody This, Antibody That, They Weren't Really Much Interested” -
13 “These People Don't Know What They're Doing” -
14 “I Suppose I Should Do Something, Maybe an Experiment or Something” - The Selection Theory as a Personal Confession
-
15 “My Hopes and Failures Are Within Myself” -
16 “This Theory Hadn't Made Much of a Stir, So Now, What Was I to Do?” -
17 “I'd Better Make Sure I Learn a Little about Immunology” -
18 “Finally, My Precious, I Have to Be Brilliant and Make Antibodies” -
19 “Like a Log Coming Slowly to the Surface of a Lake” -
20 “I Still Think That My Original Natural Selection Theory Was Better” -
21 “Immunology Is for Me Becoming a Mostly Philosophical Subject” - Epilogue: “What Struggle to Escape”
- Abbreviations Used in Notes
- Unpublished Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
“Immunology Is for Me Becoming a Mostly Philosophical Subject”
“Immunology Is for Me Becoming a Mostly Philosophical Subject”
- Chapter:
- (p.278) 21 “Immunology Is for Me Becoming a Mostly Philosophical Subject”
- Source:
- Science as Autobiography
- Author(s):
Thomas Söderqvist
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
This chapter focuses on the time of Niels Jerne's retirement, after more than a decade as director of the Basel Institute. Roche asked Fritz Melchers, who had been at the institute almost since its start, to take over the post. Jerne was sixty-eight years old, and despite two or three packs of cigarettes a day and ever increasing alcohol consumption, he was still in full vigor. For about a year, he functioned as conseiller general of the Pasteur Institute's new Department of Immunology, but he was not comfortable there. Instead he moved permanently to his summer residence in Languedoc with his young wife, Alexandra, who for many years had lived alone for long periods in Chateau de Bellevue. In France, he had more time to read, as usual on the most diverse subjects—everything from Marshall Berman's Marxist critique of modernity, All That Is Solid Melts into Air, to Nicolas Schoffer's La theorie des miroirs, a book that reinforced his vision of the immune system as an endless hall of mirrors.
Keywords: conseiller general, Niels Jerne, retirement, Basel Institute, Roche, Fritz Melchers, Pasteur Institute, Department of Immunology, Chateau de Bellevue
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- Title Pages
- Frontispiece
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on the Translation
- Introduction: A Scientist in His Life's Project
-
1 “I Have Never in My Life Felt I Belonged in the Place Where I Lived” -
2 “Stylistically, I'm Best at Irony” -
3 “I Wanted to Study Something That Couldn't Be Used” -
4 “I Have the Feeling That Everything Around Me Is Enveloped in a Mist” -
5 “When I Look at Other Scientists … None of Them Have Wasted as Many Years as I Have” -
6 “Now I Think Nobody Can Keep Me from Becoming a Doctor” -
7 “To Be Able to Let Nature Reflect in the Depths of My Own Soul” -
8 “I Am Branded with Infidelity, and See That Open-Eyed” -
9 “Letters Are a Spiritual Spiderweb in Which You Snare the Dreaming Soul of a Woman” -
10 “The Happiness of Feeling Superior to a Lot of People” -
11 “I Think the Work Has Principal Application to Immunology” -
12 “Antibody This, Antibody That, They Weren't Really Much Interested” -
13 “These People Don't Know What They're Doing” -
14 “I Suppose I Should Do Something, Maybe an Experiment or Something” - The Selection Theory as a Personal Confession
-
15 “My Hopes and Failures Are Within Myself” -
16 “This Theory Hadn't Made Much of a Stir, So Now, What Was I to Do?” -
17 “I'd Better Make Sure I Learn a Little about Immunology” -
18 “Finally, My Precious, I Have to Be Brilliant and Make Antibodies” -
19 “Like a Log Coming Slowly to the Surface of a Lake” -
20 “I Still Think That My Original Natural Selection Theory Was Better” -
21 “Immunology Is for Me Becoming a Mostly Philosophical Subject” - Epilogue: “What Struggle to Escape”
- Abbreviations Used in Notes
- Unpublished Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
