Horace Judson's book The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979) is a major contribution to the increasing stream of studies on the development of molecular biology and biochemical genetics. The author's background is quite different from that of most historians; he is a journalist who has served in the past as arts and science correspondent for Time magazine in Europe, and has written for the New Yorker and other magazines. Much of the first part of this book appeared in the New Yorker late in 1978, but one could not have guessed from those articles, impressive though they were, the scope and magnitude of the book as a whole.
The book is the product of ten years of devoted labor by a man who was roused to realization of the intense interest and importance of the subject in 1968 through discussions with Max Perutz about his work on the structure of hemoglobin, and influenced by Perutz's broad perspective on molecular biology in general. Late in 1969 in Paris, Judson met Jacques Monod, who outlined the major workers and discoveries that (Monod believed) the book must consider, and convinced Judson that it must be written along such lines. Later he received help and encouragement from Matthew Meselson, a friend from early days. In the writing of the book he has received immense help and detailed criticism from Francis Crick. Others to whom he acknowledges particular indebtedness are Francois Jacob, Sydney Brenner, and Sir Lawrence Bragg. Altogether he has personally interviewed 111 scientists, 32 of them repeatedly, and has conferred by telephone or letter with a considerable number of scientists, and sometimes their families and friends. Many of the conversations are recorded in detail, so that the personality of the speaker, and his outlook on science and the larger world outside of science, come through strongly.
The book is based to a large extent on these personal conversations, but Judson has also studied intensively a large portion of the relevant published literature, and gives citations in his fifty pages of closely printed notes. He has drawn also on important correspondence, notably