Science is no quiet life. Imagination, creativity, ambition, and conflict are as vital and abundant in science as in artistic endeavors. In this collection of essays, the Nobel Prize-winning protein chemist Max Perutz writes about the pursuit of scientific knowledge, which he sees as an enterprise providing not just new facts but cause for reflection and revelation, as in a poem or painting.

Perutz seeks to convince us that science is a passionate enterprise and the pursuit of knowledge a sortie into the unknown. There is no more persuasive advocate. These pages are filled with portraits of twentieth-century giants, Pauling, Meitner, Bragg, Haber, Medawar, Szilard, Jacob, Krebs, and others.

There are entertaining glimpses of Perutz's own long and exceptional life: his flight from Vienna in the 30's and internment in Britain as an enemy alien in World War II, rescue from the sea after a U-boat attack, involvement in a scheme to make ships of ice for refuelling aircraft in the North Atlantic, and after the war his intense, ten-year struggle to perfect a new way of understanding protein structure and function.

Perutz is an eloquent spokesman for humanitarian causes, and his observations on abortion issues, nuclear fuel reprocessing, and human rights reflect a lifelong concern for both social justice and scientific integrity.