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I’m very excited about the paperback release of my book ’ The Man in the Monkeynut Coat’ by Oxford University Press in 2022. The book tells the story of pioneering scientist William Astbury whose X-ray studies of wool wove an unlikely path to unravelling the structure of DNA, the genetic material. When the book was first published in 2014 it was featured on a list of ‘Books of 2014’ in ‘The Guardian’ and was shortlisted for the 2015 British Society for the History of Science Dingle Prize.

But the paperback will be much more than just a reprint of the original. I like to think of it as a ‘director’s cut’ containing material that never made it into the earlier book such as the story of Laszlo Lorand, a young medical student who fled the Communist authorities in his native Hungary to arrive at Astbury’s lab in Leeds in the middle of winter with only a suitcase at his side but went on to figure out how blood clots form. There’s also much more about the intriguing story of how Astbury used X-rays to probe the molecular structure of Mozart’s hair. But perhaps most importantly of all, the book looks at how a coat made from monkey nut proteins has a powerful relevance for a world shaped by Covid-19…

I was very excited to have just received the cover design from Oxford University Press, the publishers of my new book ‘Insulin, The Crooked Timber – a History from Thick Brown Muck to Wall Street Gold’ which will be released this December to mark the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin – a milestone in medicine that has saved countless lives – including my own. It’s a story that in parts I have likened to ‘Game of Thrones’ but enacted with lab coats and pipettes instead of chain mail and poisoned daggers, albeit one for which myself and many others are very grateful.

Thanks to sporting giants such as Sir Ian Botham and Sir Alastair Cook, the Leeds suburb of Headingley is more usually associated with cricketing legends, (especially as the England team are currently turning the tide against India there) – but it’s also been the home of scientific legends who blazed the trail in the story of DNA. One such unsung heroine is Florence Bell who, in 1938 made the very first X-ray studies of the structure of DNA – and all thanks to research by her supervisor William Astbury into the humble wool fibre! There’s more about Bell and how wool played a vital role in unravelling the molecular mysteries of DNA in my new article ‘On the Shoulders of Giants’ for the online science journal ‘Inference’ at https://inference-review.com/letter/on-the-shoulders-of-giants

I’m also delighted and honoured to have been invited by Girton College, Cambridge to give their annual alumni lecture this year on ‘Florence Bell – the ‘housewife’ with X-ray vision’ – a title taken from a recent paper that I wrote about her for the Royal Society

#girtonalumniweekend2021 #girtoncollegeannuallibrarytalk #girtonalumni #girtoncollege #cambridgealumnifestival