Dear classmates:

I screwed up on the item about Ellen Daniell.  I should have said the URL was a connection to her new book,
which apparently will be published under a different title.  For the correct title, see:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0300113234/qid=1126906308/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-4999985-3554537?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Also, it should be noted that this book is not about the discovery of PCR (read Ellen's email below to find out what it
is really about):
-------------------------------------------
From: "ellen daniell" <ellen_daniell@hotmail.com> 
Subject: News correction
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 14:13:48 +0000

Dear Jeff,

I've had the greatest intentions to write to you (and to Glenda Rauscher who's been doing such a good job on our Alumni Mag Class Notes).  Having just finished the editing the final proofs of my book, it seemed definitely time to report.  And now you have found and shared a link to it, I'm spurred to write immediately to set the record straight on what it is.   The title is "Every Other Thursday: Stories and Strategies from Successful Women Scientists."  It will be available in March from Yale University Press. 

It's the story of a problem-solving group that is still going strong 28 years after its founding by faculty and staff in biochemistry at UC San Francisco, and includes my personal experiences in academia (UC Berkeley). 

There are a few paragraphs about Swarthmore (the first drafts had much more, so I have excised material that maybe I'll use another time.)  I did have a role in the development of PCR, on the business rather than the technical side, but this book doesn't deal with that at all.

The title in the link that you shared in your news was an interim one that Yale used until they chose something better.  I learned (among MANY lessons about the publishing world) that publishers provide the big sellers with access to their tracking systems, so as soon as a manuscript reaches a certain point in publication scheduling, Amazon and Allbookstores and others automatically list it by whatever title the press has in its computer system.  Thus the book with an incorrect title.  I've checked and Amazon has it right now, Allbookstores still has the faux title.

I'm very excited.  It took four years to write the book and three to find a publisher, and now it is a reality.  I'll keep you posted-- if anyone is planning to be at the AAAS meeting in St. Louis in February, I think that's going to be the actual launch (but that could change.)

Thanks, as always, for all the great work on news-- Lew’s report about Lafayette was particularly welcome.  I had heard from Peggy and Peter Thompson about their son Joe's harrowing escape with a bird and a dog.  I think he headed straight back to Louisiana to give medical help after a day or two recovery with family.

Ellen Daniell
510 531-6261
ellen_daniell@hotmail.com
-----------------------------------
The PCR book that I meant to tell you about is a 1996 book by Paul Rabinow and reviewed by Richard Bilsker:


 

Paul Rabinow, Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1996, -vii, 190 pp. (ISBN: 0-226-70147-6)
by Richard Bilsker

Making PCR is an anthropologist's account of how one of the late Twentieth-Century's most significant 'inventions' happened. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is what allows one to amplify a specific target DNA exponentially, thus giving researchers unlimited amounts of precise genetic material for their work. Rabinow's book provides a history of the structures, people and techniques that had to be in place to yield PCR. Similar in structure to Sharon Traweek's anthropological study of particle physics (Beamtimes and Lifetimes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1988), Making PCR opens and closes with philosophical questions about the nature of scientific practice. All of the chapters except the Introduction include interesting interviews with the key figures (David Gelfand, Tom White, Robert Fildes, Jeff Price, Ellen Daniell, Randy Saiki, Henry Erlich, and Shirley Kwok) of whom there are also photos in pp. 170-171. The interviews make the book readable without sacrificing the philosophical discussions which are frequently absent from journalistic popularizations of scientific discovery.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, here is a message from Helen Lom:

From: "Helen Lom" <helen.lom@wipo.int>
To: <hartj@indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: more news

Dear Jeff,

Thank you for your efforts in trying to keep us in touch.  Through you,
I want to transmit my good wishes to all of our classmates who were
affected by Katrina. I hope that they are well.

In sleepy Geneva, life is relatively quiet.  My older daughter is a
senior at Swarthmore and my younger one is starting her first year at
Bowdoin.  Where did time go?

Work with a UN agency is both as satisfying and frustrating as ever.  I
hope that some of our efforts and the amounts of money invested do some
good, sometimes, somewhere.  My feelings about this change as often as
mountain weather.  One of the interesting aspects of my work has been
the opportunity to work with people from all around the world and
sometimes to travel to countries where I might have never gone
otherwise, such as Iran, Cuba, and Namibia, among others.   

With warm regards to all,

Helen Lom
-----------------------
 

X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.2
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.2.0.14
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 01:52:54 -0500
To: hartj@indiana.edu
From: Jeffrey Hart <hartj@indiana.edu>
Subject: Swarthmore Class of 1969