The Chemistry of Life: Eight Lectures on the History of Biochemistry

Front Cover
Joseph Needham
CUP Archive, 1970 - 213 pages
This assembly of lectures, each on a major aspect of the development of biochemistry, should appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of science and the nature of living things. Seven of the eight lectures are by eminent biochemists and describe the development of their own subject from the inside; the eighth is a more general one by a professional historian of science. They contain a good deal of information not readily available elsewhere and do not require a special knowledge of biochemistry. The lectures were originally given as a series, over a period of several years, under the auspices of the department of the History and Philosophy of Science in the University of Cambridge.

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Contents

The growth of our knowledge of photosynthesis I
1
The History of Enzymes and of Bio logical Oxidations
2
The history of enzymes and of biological oxidations
15
The development of microbiology
38
Some biochemical signposts in the progress of neurology
60
The evolution of ideas about animal hormones
125
The discovery of vitamins
156
The historical foundations of modern biochemistry
171
Some lone pioneers of biochemistry in the nineteenth
192
Index
205
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