When Professor Isidore Cantor reveals his latest breakthrough in cancer research, the scientific community is galvanized. Cantor s most promising research fellow, Dr. Jeremiah Stafford, has only to conduct the experiment that will prove the brilliant hypothesis and win Cantor the Nobel Prize. But how far will the young assistant go to guarantee the results?
Carl Djerassi draws from his long career as a world-famous scientist to describe the fierce competition driving scientific super-stars in this gripping and suspenseful novel.
A brilliant tale of the morals and politics of...

A beautifully ingenious, funny, brilliantly intelligent, and moving tale of very human scientists. A splendid novel. Iris Murdoch
At the age of 68, distinguished Princeton science professor Max Weiss is bribed into taking an early retirement. Frustratingly aware that his best years are not yet behind him, Weiss devises an inventive revenge in the form of Dr. Diana Skordylis a pseudonym for a partnership among Weiss and three aging colleagues, each with an ax to grind against the scientific community. What the Skordylis group doesn t anticipate, however, is the unbridled success of their...

A compelling novel based on the high-stakes biotech industry and the science behind Viagra from the internationally known Father of the Pill.
The fourth installment of Carl Djerassi s pioneering science-in-fiction tetralogy tells the story of a husband and wife team who devise new solutions to problems associated with sex and reproduction. Renu Krishnan is an Indian-born, American-educated scientist who discovers how NO (nitric oxide) can help men with erectile dysfunction the scientific rationale behind Viagra. At the same time, her husband, Israeli scientist Jephtah Cohn, develops a...

One of the most challenging issues of the 21st century is the impending separation of sex (in bed) and reproduction (under the microscope) as a result of recent advances in contraception and assisted reproduction. Many of the ethical and societal issues associated with these new reproductive technologies, notably intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), are raised in an unusual format — namely in dialogic form — which is both entertaining and pedagogically informative.

”What purpose is served by showing that England's greatest natural philosopher is flawed … like other mortals?” asks one of the characters in Newton's Darkness. “We need unsullied heroes ” But what if the hero is sullied? At stake is an issue that is as germane today as it was 300 years ago: a scientist's ethics must not be divorced from scientific accomplishments. There is probably no other scientist of whom so many biographies and other historical analyses have been published than Isaac Newton — all of them in the standard...

Carl Djerassi is one of the fathers of the Pill he was awarded the National Medal of Science for the first synthesis of a steroid oral contraceptive and has had a prolific additional career as a writer of fiction, plays, and dialogues about science. In these two plays, ICSI and Taboos, he dramatizes the social transformations and contested viewpoints created by advances in reproductive science and technology. Two of the most startling developments in contemporary science have radically disrupted the historical connection between sex and reproduction: in vitro fertilization and...

Carl Djerassi is one of the fathers of the Pill he was awarded the National Medal of Science for the first synthesis of a steroid oral contraceptive and has had a prolific additional career as a writer of fiction, plays, and dialogues about science. In these two plays, ICSI and Taboos, he dramatizes the social transformations and contested viewpoints created by advances in reproductive science and technology. Two of the most startling developments in contemporary science have radically disrupted the historical connection between sex and reproduction: in vitro fertilization and...

This book features a CD of rarely performed music, including a specially commissioned rap by Erik Weiner of Walter Benjamin's "Thesis on the Philosophy of History."

Theodor W. Adorno was the prototypical German Jewish non-Jew, Walter Benjamin vacillated between German Jew and Jewish German, Gershom Scholem was a committed Zionist, and Arnold Schonberg converted to Protestantism for professional reasons but later returned to Judaism. Carl Djerassi, himself a refugee from Hitler's Austria, dramatizes a dialogue between these four men in which they discuss fraternity, religious...

Science in Fiction hat Carl Djerassi die Form der Literatur genannt, zu der er 1989 mit Cantors Dilemma seine erste berzeugende Probe gegeben hat.Nach dem Nobelpreis-Roman Cantors Dilemma folgte 1993 Das Bourbaki Gambit, in dem es um das leidenschaftliche Verlangen von Naturwissenschaftlern nach Anerkennung durch ihresgleichen geht und um die Frage, ob Kollegialitt und Freundschaft unter Wissenschaftlern denn mglich ist oder Migunst und Ehrgeiz, Gier nach Erfolg und finanzieller Nutzen die Szene beherrschen.

Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno were intellectual giants of the first half of the twentieth century. The drama Foreplay explores their deeply human and psychologically intriguing private lives, focusing on professional and personal jealousies, the mutual dislike of Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, the association between Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille, and the border between erotica and pornography.

Djerassi s extensive biographical research brings to light many fascinating details revealed in the dialogues among the characters, including Adorno s...