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Lives of a Biologist: Adventures in a century of extraordinary science by John Tyler Bonner, Harvard University Press, £16.95, ISBN 0674007638 Reviewed by Bernard Dixon

“THERE is no such thing as a biologist,” said the burly sergeant inducting John Tyler Bonner into the US Army, back in the 1940s. Little did he know that the precocious Bonner had, at the age of 14, already succeeded in getting biology onto his school curriculum.

This memoir by the great celebrant of slime moulds offers a fascinating overview of a century of biology. Bonner tells of changes in biological thinking, and his own…

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