A Brief History of Creation

Nope, this isn't about Genesis. As quoted in the epilogue, the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt once remarked that there are three phases of scientific discovery. The first is denial. The second is denial of importance. The third is crediting the wrong person. Anyone vaguely familiar with history of scientific progress is only too familiar with the premise of the quote. Mesler and Cleaves focus on the oft-ignored origin of life discoveries and dig into the history starting from Egyptians and the Greeks to Szostak.

Many of my biochemistry friends are well aware of the names mentioned in this book but it was revelatory for me and helped me understand treacherous path of discovery. Having studied philosophical debates in history of scientific progress, I haven't had the opportunity to read about the tussles within the science community. We all know about Darwin, Watson & Crick, etc. but the details of the work of Carl Woese developed on Darwin's primodial soup was unknown to me. The battles between Voltaire and Needham couldn't have been more interesting.

I highly recommend this book to all science and history fans.