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Apprentice to Genius: The Making of a Scientific Dynasty
From the author of the best-selling The Man Who Knew Infinity, comes an unprecedented look at the traditional master-apprentice relationship alive today in modern science. Robert Kanigel takes us into the heady world of a remarkable group of scientists working at the National Institutes of Health and the Johns Hopkins a dynasty of American researchers who for more than forty years have made Nobel Prize-and Lasker Award-winning breakthroughs in biomedical science. He brilliantly captures the drama of fine minds and explosice personalities at work-whether Bernard Brodie and Julius Axelrod discovering a new wonder drug called Tylenol or Solomon Snyder and Candace Pert unlocking the chemical secrets of the brain. And as we watch ideas debated, expierments working and failing, careers and relationships tested, and professional honors lost and won, we see close up all that is so deeply human in the practice of science. In a new epilogue to this edition, Kanigel brings us up-to-date on the lives and careers of these unforgettable personalities.
304 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 1993
17 people are currently reading
1104 people want to read
About the author
Robert Kanigel
21 books135 followersRobert Kanigel was born in Brooklyn, but for most of his adult life has lived in Baltimore. He has written nine books.
"The Man Who Knew Infinity," his second book, was named a National Book Critics Circle finalist, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and a New York Public Library "Book to Remember." It has been translated into Italian, German, Polish, Greek, Chinese, Thai, and many other languages, and has been made into a feature film, starring Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015.
Kanigel's 2012 book, "On an Irish Island," set on a windswept island village off the coast of Ireland, was nurtured by a Guggenheim fellowship and later awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize by the American Conference for Irish Studies.
"Eyes on the Street," his biography of Jane Jacobs, the far-seeing author of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" and fearless champion of big-city life, was published by Knopf in 2016.
His most recent book, "Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry," is a biography of the man who revolutionized our understanding of the Homeric epics. In support of this project Kanigel was awarded an NEH Public Scholar award.
"The Man Who Knew Infinity," his second book, was named a National Book Critics Circle finalist, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and a New York Public Library "Book to Remember." It has been translated into Italian, German, Polish, Greek, Chinese, Thai, and many other languages, and has been made into a feature film, starring Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015.
Kanigel's 2012 book, "On an Irish Island," set on a windswept island village off the coast of Ireland, was nurtured by a Guggenheim fellowship and later awarded the Michael J. Durkan Prize by the American Conference for Irish Studies.
"Eyes on the Street," his biography of Jane Jacobs, the far-seeing author of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" and fearless champion of big-city life, was published by Knopf in 2016.
His most recent book, "Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry," is a biography of the man who revolutionized our understanding of the Homeric epics. In support of this project Kanigel was awarded an NEH Public Scholar award.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 1, 2025
Got hooked onto this by a podcast by Patrick Collison, explaining why he started the Arc Institute. I highly recommend this book to any academic, especially the juniors in the field. It gives you a sense of what is possible in the world of scientific discoveries and the personal dramas/egos involved in it!
July 21, 2020
This is one of the very few books on scientific mentoring, the flowing blood of the academic world. Remember that research gene is passed on from mentor to mentees, to great-mentees, and great great-mentees.
There is a reason behind Nobel price winners' attribution of success "I thank the most to my teacher X". Especially when a researcher is junior, success lies 50% in his own talent, and 50% in his blood (his role in the scientific dynasty, i.e., his relationship to big names).
E.g., Bernard Beryl Brodie wrote a letter to James Augustine Shannon mentioning that collaboration with Shanon is the most exciting thing in his career and signals the beginning of his research life (“与您在戈尔德沃特纪念医院共同参与疟疾项目，是我职业生涯中最令人激动的阶段之一。那是我职业生涯的真正开始。”).
E.g., Bernard Beryl Brodie hinted Julius Axelrod that medicine's effect is an interplay with human bodies. Brodie notice the future picture of how to use Tylenol. Brodie transitioned Axelrod from analyzing properties of a chemical into real research.
Some quality of research mentors: James Augustine Shannon transitioned into an academic leader; Shannon is considered the most logical person in his mentee's eyes; Bernard Beryl Brodie is a passionate workaholic; Brodie is expertise at noticing the great value of a small research result; Brodie has a very strong logic system so that he could raise questions that a domain expert should have raised ten years ago to himself; in a 15-min conversation, Brodie can start from knowing nothing about Thyroid, to asking very deep questions in that domain; Shannon is very good at HR;
Conflicts: Brodie prevents Axelrod from leaving his lab and getting a PhD. Brodie implements autocracy.
There is a reason behind Nobel price winners' attribution of success "I thank the most to my teacher X". Especially when a researcher is junior, success lies 50% in his own talent, and 50% in his blood (his role in the scientific dynasty, i.e., his relationship to big names).
E.g., Bernard Beryl Brodie wrote a letter to James Augustine Shannon mentioning that collaboration with Shanon is the most exciting thing in his career and signals the beginning of his research life (“与您在戈尔德沃特纪念医院共同参与疟疾项目，是我职业生涯中最令人激动的阶段之一。那是我职业生涯的真正开始。”).
E.g., Bernard Beryl Brodie hinted Julius Axelrod that medicine's effect is an interplay with human bodies. Brodie notice the future picture of how to use Tylenol. Brodie transitioned Axelrod from analyzing properties of a chemical into real research.
Some quality of research mentors: James Augustine Shannon transitioned into an academic leader; Shannon is considered the most logical person in his mentee's eyes; Bernard Beryl Brodie is a passionate workaholic; Brodie is expertise at noticing the great value of a small research result; Brodie has a very strong logic system so that he could raise questions that a domain expert should have raised ten years ago to himself; in a 15-min conversation, Brodie can start from knowing nothing about Thyroid, to asking very deep questions in that domain; Shannon is very good at HR;
Conflicts: Brodie prevents Axelrod from leaving his lab and getting a PhD. Brodie implements autocracy.
January 17, 2023
Kanigel writes about the important topic of how scientific discovery, while described in middle schools as a calculated "method", emerges in social structures. By introducing a set of characters that played major roles in pharmacological research, the author concludes that the mentor-mentee relationship that is forged in the laboratory is the principal reason that scientists become productive and ultimately can come up with novel work. Indeed, Kanigel shows how scientists tend to absorb certain unwritten techniques or "style" from their mentors which allows them to navigate the large and complex enterprise which is scientific research. While other possible causes of excellence transmitted through mentorship are not thoroughly investigated (e.g., alumni of elite institutions are given more opportunities, while these are not always the most capable scientists), the book makes a great job illustrating scientific development in terms of personal relations between mentors and mentees.
Towards the end of the book, the focus on the personal seems to displace these ideas and, instead, it feels more like "gossip in the sciences". The Lasker flap or the last pages describing the frailty of Brodie in his later age do not, in my mind, add much to the ideas that Kanigel introduces at the beginning of the book.
Towards the end of the book, the focus on the personal seems to displace these ideas and, instead, it feels more like "gossip in the sciences". The Lasker flap or the last pages describing the frailty of Brodie in his later age do not, in my mind, add much to the ideas that Kanigel introduces at the beginning of the book.
July 31, 2013
Interesting from a historical perspective, as an inside look at the world of high science, and in seeing the trend of how things pass from one generation to another. The most interesting point was the Matthew Effect in science. I'd never heard of that before!
December 19, 2019
Kanigel traces the early history of neuropharmacology through a single lineage of mentorships and examines the role of apprenticeship in science and how research "genes" get passed on from generation to generation. He does this through one line beginning with James Shannon, who ends up forming the NIH into what it is today, and traces the line through to Candace Pert, four generations down the line.
The story begins in the early 1940's, as James Shannon is put in charge of the malaria division of Goldwater Hospital in New York to work on the pharmacology of atabrine, because it was basically a drug that didn't work, but was sorely needed for the Pacific theater of World War II . Part of the problem was that doctors were pretty much guessing at how much drug to give, and the science of pharmacology at the time depended on a sort of guess and check system using the behavioral results from patients. Shannon's great skill seemed to be in gathering and inspiring the right people for the job. One of those he recruits is Bernard "Steve" Brodie, who completely changes pharmacology.
Brodie develops techniques for tracking the fate of drugs in the bodies in a more quantitative way, and how to use this new measurement practically for studying drugs and manipulating them. To give you an idea of the impact of Brodie on science, Wikipedia says, "his most significant discovery was that animal and human responses to drugs do not differ significantly."
Brodie was known for inspiring and risky work, and for being a little overbearing and controlling as a lab leader. He takes on Julius Axelrod, who is, at the time, a technician. Axelrod thrives in Brodie's lab. He does so much so, that he essentially discovers the microsomal enzyme system by himself by designing his own experiments. Brodie realized the broad implications of the system, which is that the liver has an array of enzymes that are generalized to "declaw" toxins, and publishes a paper with himself as first author and Axelrod as second author, which exasperates Axelrod, who believes he deserved more credit. He eventually splits and starts his own laboratory.
In his own lab, Axelrod works out the release and reuptake of catecholamines (for which he wins the Nobel Prize much to Brodie's chagrin), and also contributes to the understanding of the pineal gland and sleep-wake cycles.
He hires Solomon Snyder, the next in the line that the book covers, who starts working on identifying receptors for the major neurotransmitters in the brain. Particularly important (both politically at the time and medically) was identifying the opiate receptor which was assigned as a PhD project to Candace Pert. She isolated the receptor, and Snyder shared the Lasker award with two others who had been working on the opiate receptor for a while, which infuriates Pert, and she goes public with her exclusion (which may have prevented Snyder from receiving the Nobel prize).
Through this story, a beautiful history of the science is presented with a good amount of detail about the often simple but elegant experiments designed to make some of the essential discoveries in neuropharmacology in the 20th century. Despite many conflicts between mentors and mentees, the story comes across as mostly fairly presented, excepting some sexist undertones in the treatment of Candace Pert. I personally felt that there was a little too much emphasis on the "scientific style" that gets passed from mentors to mentees as an explanation for scientific success. It certainly makes for a better narrative, but it seems more likely to me that scientific funding and opportunity is what drives more of that success, along with the fact that famous scientists get to pick better trainees.
The way the story is presented is thought-provoking and offers a lot of mental cud to mull over. How does the "rich get richer" effect in science affect scientific progress, and is it good or bad? Should we invest public funds into curing specific diseases or into basic scientific discoveries? How do you go about assigning credit for scientific discoveries? What are the best ways to address the natural tensions between mentors and mentees? I would recommend this book generally, but I think that other scientists would find it particularly interesting.
The story begins in the early 1940's, as James Shannon is put in charge of the malaria division of Goldwater Hospital in New York to work on the pharmacology of atabrine, because it was basically a drug that didn't work, but was sorely needed for the Pacific theater of World War II . Part of the problem was that doctors were pretty much guessing at how much drug to give, and the science of pharmacology at the time depended on a sort of guess and check system using the behavioral results from patients. Shannon's great skill seemed to be in gathering and inspiring the right people for the job. One of those he recruits is Bernard "Steve" Brodie, who completely changes pharmacology.
Brodie develops techniques for tracking the fate of drugs in the bodies in a more quantitative way, and how to use this new measurement practically for studying drugs and manipulating them. To give you an idea of the impact of Brodie on science, Wikipedia says, "his most significant discovery was that animal and human responses to drugs do not differ significantly."
Brodie was known for inspiring and risky work, and for being a little overbearing and controlling as a lab leader. He takes on Julius Axelrod, who is, at the time, a technician. Axelrod thrives in Brodie's lab. He does so much so, that he essentially discovers the microsomal enzyme system by himself by designing his own experiments. Brodie realized the broad implications of the system, which is that the liver has an array of enzymes that are generalized to "declaw" toxins, and publishes a paper with himself as first author and Axelrod as second author, which exasperates Axelrod, who believes he deserved more credit. He eventually splits and starts his own laboratory.
In his own lab, Axelrod works out the release and reuptake of catecholamines (for which he wins the Nobel Prize much to Brodie's chagrin), and also contributes to the understanding of the pineal gland and sleep-wake cycles.
He hires Solomon Snyder, the next in the line that the book covers, who starts working on identifying receptors for the major neurotransmitters in the brain. Particularly important (both politically at the time and medically) was identifying the opiate receptor which was assigned as a PhD project to Candace Pert. She isolated the receptor, and Snyder shared the Lasker award with two others who had been working on the opiate receptor for a while, which infuriates Pert, and she goes public with her exclusion (which may have prevented Snyder from receiving the Nobel prize).
Through this story, a beautiful history of the science is presented with a good amount of detail about the often simple but elegant experiments designed to make some of the essential discoveries in neuropharmacology in the 20th century. Despite many conflicts between mentors and mentees, the story comes across as mostly fairly presented, excepting some sexist undertones in the treatment of Candace Pert. I personally felt that there was a little too much emphasis on the "scientific style" that gets passed from mentors to mentees as an explanation for scientific success. It certainly makes for a better narrative, but it seems more likely to me that scientific funding and opportunity is what drives more of that success, along with the fact that famous scientists get to pick better trainees.
The way the story is presented is thought-provoking and offers a lot of mental cud to mull over. How does the "rich get richer" effect in science affect scientific progress, and is it good or bad? Should we invest public funds into curing specific diseases or into basic scientific discoveries? How do you go about assigning credit for scientific discoveries? What are the best ways to address the natural tensions between mentors and mentees? I would recommend this book generally, but I think that other scientists would find it particularly interesting.
October 10, 2025
"There is one striking observation that can be made about these elite scientists: They have usually served in the labs of other elite scientists–just as they, in turn, become mentors to the next generation of the elite"
How do the most successful labs and institutions so frequently produce world-class scientists? What gets passed down between scientific generations, between mentor and mentee?
Throughout the book, Kanigel gives plenty of examples of how it's the problem-solving approaches and attitudes – more so than the raw scientific knowledge – that gets inherited from one generation to next. In particular, Brodie's "take a flier" approach is characterized by quick experiments, doing rather than thinking, and finding the easiest routes to unlocking new information. Perhaps the most valuable is the intuition on what problems are worth solving; it varies drastically between fields and generations, yet it feels certainly capable of being developed.
I heard about this book on a podcast with Patrick Collison, who references it when asked to give advice to young people. Paraphrasing a bit: find someplace that embodies the highest standards in your field, and go there. Indeed, many of the discoveries referenced in the book were driven by the extraordinary talent density of NIH. With such a highly-curated milieu, these scientists could easily find experts in niche domains to exchange ideas, while having constant access to state of the art techniques. Today, there are a couple technology companies that come to mind as modern NIH's or Bell Lab's – but can you really tell in the moment?
Another smaller observation is that we sometimes incorrectly index on particular personality traits, even though they're irrelevant to the ability to do world-class science. Pert is painted as someone who's incredibly forthright and candid; Snyder as someone perhaps more calculating; and Axelrod as a gentler, kinder mentor figure. Each finds their unique styles of doing science and living life, while united by their fundamental intuitions about problems and how to approach them.
The book itself felt unnecessarily gossipy with excerpts of extreme technicalities splashed in; I would have preferred more details into their particular routines, habits, unique traits, etc.
How do the most successful labs and institutions so frequently produce world-class scientists? What gets passed down between scientific generations, between mentor and mentee?
Throughout the book, Kanigel gives plenty of examples of how it's the problem-solving approaches and attitudes – more so than the raw scientific knowledge – that gets inherited from one generation to next. In particular, Brodie's "take a flier" approach is characterized by quick experiments, doing rather than thinking, and finding the easiest routes to unlocking new information. Perhaps the most valuable is the intuition on what problems are worth solving; it varies drastically between fields and generations, yet it feels certainly capable of being developed.
I heard about this book on a podcast with Patrick Collison, who references it when asked to give advice to young people. Paraphrasing a bit: find someplace that embodies the highest standards in your field, and go there. Indeed, many of the discoveries referenced in the book were driven by the extraordinary talent density of NIH. With such a highly-curated milieu, these scientists could easily find experts in niche domains to exchange ideas, while having constant access to state of the art techniques. Today, there are a couple technology companies that come to mind as modern NIH's or Bell Lab's – but can you really tell in the moment?
Another smaller observation is that we sometimes incorrectly index on particular personality traits, even though they're irrelevant to the ability to do world-class science. Pert is painted as someone who's incredibly forthright and candid; Snyder as someone perhaps more calculating; and Axelrod as a gentler, kinder mentor figure. Each finds their unique styles of doing science and living life, while united by their fundamental intuitions about problems and how to approach them.
The book itself felt unnecessarily gossipy with excerpts of extreme technicalities splashed in; I would have preferred more details into their particular routines, habits, unique traits, etc.
July 10, 2022
I really enjoyed this book and it changed how I see academia. By identifying patterns among those who receive Nobel Prizes, the book reveals the unmistakable influence of mentoring on scientific approaches; many Nobel laureates were mentored by another famous researcher, perhaps another Nobel laureate. This is a fantastic book that brings insights into the structure of academia illustrating the compounding effect of fortunes where those who have resources continue to receive more. Through quotes, Kanigel even hints at scientific strategies that successful mentors teach their trainees.
Given how impactful this book was for me, I wish that more researchers were familiar with this book.
Given how impactful this book was for me, I wish that more researchers were familiar with this book.
July 6, 2017
It is a wonderful book about the scientific mentoring. Kanigel told us many vivid stories about top-flight scientists pass down their "research genes" to their apprentices.
It is especially useful for every bright and ambitious graduate student or postdoc.
This book should also be read by every top scientist in the world. Your legacy lies not just in you individual achievement, but also in passing down your "research genes" to the next generation.
It is especially useful for every bright and ambitious graduate student or postdoc.
This book should also be read by every top scientist in the world. Your legacy lies not just in you individual achievement, but also in passing down your "research genes" to the next generation.
October 14, 2024
“Taking a flier” - what an interesting way to word courage in research. I really enjoyed thinking about how lab cultures and persistence dictate innovation. Especially enjoyed reading about Julius Axelrod and his ability to be grounded in the lab. What I took away for my own research, beyond the importance of bold moves, was how they did quick hypotheses testing.
January 24, 2023
Fantastic documentation of the scientific tradition. My favorite part is how the original thinkers pave the way, as always, and everyone else is left seething with envy. What a surprise, the best people in science, hardly follow the scientific method.
January 8, 2025
Insightful and surprisingly juicy. A cool bite of scientific history with enough mentor-mentee drama to keep me engaged. The comments on scientific risk-taking and mentorship are interesting and nicely summarized in chapter 12.
Want to read
October 24, 2021Patrick rec: https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1...
November 30, 2021
Veldig bra bok om mentor og apprentice i vitenskapen, gjennom generasjoner
June 9, 2024
Classic! Gets into nitty gritties of what to learn from a master researcher.
Want to read
July 28, 2024Collison podcast
Problem selection in science
High standards in an environment
Problem selection in science
High standards in an environment
December 26, 2024
So good. Kanigel is probably one of my favorite historical science authors.
History of different scientific dynasties demonstrating the lineage of different Nobel Prize winners.
History of different scientific dynasties demonstrating the lineage of different Nobel Prize winners.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews