The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets, by Thomas R. Cech. 2024. W.W. Norton & Company
- University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Worcester, MA 01655, USA
- thoru.pederson{at}umassmed.edu
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
In 1972, a pair of mathematicians published a way of depicting the socioeconomic profiles of various nations according to six variables, ranging from agriculture to the tempo of construction (Fig. 1; Herman and Montroll 1972). I came across this paper at the time, and the authors’ clever imagery stuck with me. (They termed these diagrams “snowflakes.”) I have subsequently thought that such a plot could be used to describe books on science. One vector's length would represent the degree of accuracy, another would be the writing clarity, another would be the engagement of the guild and yet another the degree of engagement of a broader audience, and so forth. Tom Cech's “The Catalyst” would be an asymmetric snowflake, in which the nodes of accuracy and clarity would be long extensions, as would the one scaled for engagement of the guild. The node of “broader appeal” would have a good …
