Max Perutz - The Author

The Author

In his later years, Perutz was a regular reviewer/essayist for The New York Review of Books on biomedical subjects. Many of these essays are reprinted in his 1998 book I wish I had made you angry earlier. Perutz's flair for writing was a late development. His relative Leo Perutz, a distinguished writer, told Max when he was a boy that he would never be a writer, an unwarranted judgement, as demonstrated by Perutz's remarkable letters written as an undergraduate. They are published in What a Time I Am Having: Selected Letters of Max Perutz. Perutz was delighted to win the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science in 1997.

Read more about this topic:  Max Perutz

Famous quotes containing the word author:

    “Have we any control over being born?,” my friend asked in despair. “No, the job is done for us while we’re sleeping, so to speak, and when we wake up everything is all set. We merely appear, like an ornate celebrity wheeled out in a wheelchair.” “I don’t remember,” my friend claimed. “No need to,” I said: “what need have us free-loaders for any special alertness? We’re done for.”
    Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. The Self-Devoted Friend, New Directions (1967)

    Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)