Blue Skies and Bench Space: Adventures in Cancer Research - Hardcover

Kathy Weston has written a book about key areas of modern biology that is both entertaining and informative. Her portraits of the key scientists at the then ICRF at Lincoln's Inn Fields, who made some of the seminal discoveries she describes, bring them to life as interesting and often entertaining people, far from the usual stereotype of the single track scientist sitting at his bench. This is a book that can be enjoyed by all, whether or not a scientist.
- Sir Walter Bodmer, Cancer & Immunogenetics Laboratory, Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine

It brings back a lot of good memories, gives a vivid description of that beehive of science, and is very well written, with lots of endearing Englishisms.
- DDLHarold Varmus, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1989; ICRF sabbatical visitor 1978-1979

Kathy Weston has written a book about key areas of modern biology that is both entertaining and informative. Her portraits of the key scientists at the then ICRF at Lincoln's Inn Fields, who made some of the seminal discoveries she describes, bring them to life as interesting and often entertaining people, far from the usual stereotype of the single track scientist sitting at his bench. This is a book that can be enjoyed by all, whether or not a scientist.
- Sir Walter Bodmer, Cancer & Immunogenetics Laboratory, Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine

It brings back a lot of good memories, gives a vivid description of that beehive of science, and is very well written, with lots of endearing Englishisms.
- DDLHarold Varmus, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1989; ICRF sabbatical visitor 1978-1979

London's Imperial Cancer Research Fund laboratories at Lincoln's Inn Fields and Clare Hall (renamed The London Research Institute in 2002) were world-famous for a century. This book, published with the assistance of the Institute, contains snapshots of the science done at the ICRF, a selection of discoveries with lasting impact on biological knowledge. The author, Kathy Weston, an experienced research investigator, also tells the human stories underlying the facts of discovery, revealing what really happened, and the personalities involved, behind the passive voice and dry logic of scientific reports. Science is an emotional journey, an art, a vocation, a complicated landscape of data in which, just sometimes, the trained and alert eye can detect the glint of gold. In this book, the gold is there but the all too human scientists stumbling towards its seductive glimmer are the real treasure.