Max F. Perutz, the winner of the 1962 Nobel prize for chemistry, never doubted the necessity, even indispensability, of science. But given today's "anti-scientific" climate, it is hardly superfluous to prove the point: through a multitude of contributions, it has bettered the human condition; there is nothing dry or abstract about it. Using a portrait gallery of illustrious scientists as a device, the author communicates to the reader a taste for the world of research.