SIGNED BY NOBEL LAUREATE. Advice to a Young Scientist

New York: Harper & Row, 1979. First edition (2nd printing).

SIGNED--CLASSIC COMPENDIUM OF KEYS TO SUCCESS FOR THE EARLY CAREER SCIENTIST BY BRILLIANT NOBELIST, DISCOVERER OF IMMUNE TOLERANCE.

14.5x24 cm hardcover, black cloth binding, gilt title to spine, inscribed front free endpaper, "To Polly from Peter Medawar." i-xv, 109 pp, very good in very good dust jacket with edgewear and crease to front flap, in protective mylar sleeve.

SIR PETER MEDAWAR (1915 - 1987) was a British zoologist whose work on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance was fundamental to the practice of tissue and organ transplants. He was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnet. FROM JACKET FLAP: "Sir Peter Medawar has entitled his book Advice to a Young Scientist, placing himself, as he observes, in the company of Polonius, Lord Chesterfield and William Cobbett. Taking the part of a benevolent counsellor, he delivers wry observations on how to choose a research topic, how to get along with collaborators, older scientists and administrators, how (and how not) to present a cientific paper, and how to cope with culturally "superior" specialists in the arts and humanities. He explains and discusses the scientific process, the various types of experiments and the limitations of science; and in the final chapter, called "Scientific Meliorism Versus Scientific Messianism", he contends that while science cannot solve all problems, it can help to make the world a better place."