It is these little stories - one or two chapters a piece, giving credit where credit is due and shedding light on the foggy procedure of institutional research - where Isaacson's expertise as a biographer shines through. There is an international web of cooperation and communication, which Isaacson makes clear as he follows and writes about the stories of the researchers from the U.S., China, Sweden, Lithuania, Spain and the rest of the world. In a chapter titled, ‘The Yogurt Makers,’ Isaacson takes the time to not only honor the history of CRISPR’s emergence, but also to shed light on some scientists who often go unnoticed, making it clear that no scientific discovery is made by a single scientist.

In many ways, Isaacson’s chapters that focus on CRISPR bring to light the unusual and often untold stories of how these kinds of breakthrough discoveries emerge. In an elegant approach, this biography contains not one story, but two connected and parallel storylines evolving beside one another: the life and work of Jennifer Doudna at UC Berkeley, and the emergence and popularization of CRISPR. A little girl who never quite fit in, Doudna found solace in good books - particularly James Watson’s “The Double Helix,” detailing his discovery of the structure of DNA. Reminiscent of his definitive look into the life of one of the previous centuries most iconic minds, Albert Einstein, the story starts with Doudna’s childhood adventures throughout her home on the big Hawaiian island Hilo.

By taking a holistic look at what got Doudna, and one of her friends and co-researchers, onto the virtual stage for the 2020 Nobel Prize ceremony, Isaacson uncovers and demystifies the stigma around high level thinking and biologic research in “The Code Breaker.”īy walking through the life of a character, the beginning of the too-short 500 page biography feels like many of Isaacson’s other incredible stories. Following her discovery of the CRISPR-cas9 system of possible gene editing, her life flew into the center of controversy and cutting-edge science. Doudna, who grew up being told that women can’t involve themselves with science, would become one of America’s greatest thinkers and kindest genetic researchers. “The Code Breaker” details the story of Jennifer Doudna as she embarks on a journey to unravel some of the mysteries of biology.

Isaacson’s ’74 most recent biography follows the life of a scientific discovery almost as much as it does the life of one incredible scientist.

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