Christian De Duve looks back on his personal and professional life, from his birth in England in 1917 to the present, covering his apprenticeship years and his scientific recognition.
‘As far as I can remember,’ he writes, ‘I wasn’t moved by an all-consuming ambition but, rather, by a feeling of obligation resulting from the conviction, which I felt and that those around me confirmed, that I was more gifted than average and thus had a special responsibility.’
How does one become a great scientist and Nobel Prize winner? What is it that, from childhood, can propel someone toward scientific research? What influences are so powerful as to determine a person’s future?
Interweaving personal memoirs and scientific discoveries, Christian De Duve captivates the reader’s interest from beginning to end.

• The fascinating, brilliant trajectory of a great scientist with a deep commitment to research.
• The history of the twentieth century, as seen through the prism of science.
• Sales have exceeded 15,000 for each one of Christian De Duve’s works.

Christian De Duve, a Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine, is professor emeritus at the Catholic University of Louvain and at New York’s Rockefeller University. He is notably the author of Génétique du péché originel (Odile Jacob, 2009), Singularités (Odile Jacob, 2005) and, more recently, of the highly successful De Jésus à Jésus… en passant par Darwin (Odile Jacob, 2011).