Science as Autobiography

The Troubled Life of Niels Jern

Thomas Soderqvist, David Mel Paul

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: The Making of a Romantic Character (1911–1947)
• 1.“I Have Never in My Life Felt I Belonged in the Place Where I Lived”
• 2.“Stylistically, I’m Best at Irony”
• 3. “I Wanted to Study Something That Couldn’t Be Used”
• 4.“I Have the Feeling That Everything Around Me Is Enveloped in a Mist”
• 5.“When I Look at Other Scientists . . .None of Them Have Wasted as Many Years as I Have”
• 6.“Now I Think Nobody Can Keep Me from Becoming a Doctor”
• 7.“To Be Able to Let Nature Reflect in the Depths ofMy Own Soul”
• 8. “I Am Branded with Infidelity, and See That Open-Eyed”
• 9.“Letters Are a Spiritual Spiderweb in Which You Snare the Dreaming Soul of Woman”
• Part II: The Making of the Selection Theory (1947–1954)
• 10.“The Happiness of Feeling Superior to a Lot of People”
• 11. “I Think the Work Has Principal Application to Immunology”
• 12.“Antibody This,Antibody That, They Weren’t Really Much Interested”
• 13.“These People Don’t Know What They’re Doing”
• 14. “I Suppose I Should Do Something,Maybe an Experiment or Something”
• Parabasis. The Selection Theory as a Personal Confession
• Part III: A Man,His Theory, and His Network (1954–1994)
• 15.“My Hopes and Failures Are Within Myself”
• 16.“This Theory Hadn’t Made Much of a Stir, So Now,What Was I to Do?”
• 17. “I’d Better Make Sure I Learn a Little about Immunology”
• 18. “Finally,My Precious, I Have to Be Brilliant and Make Antibodies”
• 19.“Like a Log Coming Slowly to the Surface of a Lake”
• 20. “I Still Think That My Original Natural Selection Theory Was Better”
• 21. “Immunology Is for Me Becoming a Mostly Philosophical Subject”
• Epilogue
• ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES
• NOTES
• UNPUBLISHED SOURCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX