The timing of Isaacson’s book could hardly be better. At one moment she’s joyfully stirring spaghetti while explaining CRISPR to her 9-year-old son during another, she’s standing in her backyard in the middle of a rainy night, reeling from the realization that leaving her academic post at the University of California, Berkeley to work in the genetics industry was a huge mistake. As Doudna interacts with a variety of talented colleagues over the years (color photos are included), she experiences excitement, uncertainty, rivalry, betrayal and more. Like Lab Girl on steroids, The Code Breaker paints a detailed picture of how scientists work. With his dynamic and formidable style, Isaacson explains the long scientific journey that led to this tool’s discovery and the exciting developments that have followed, noting, “In the history of science, there are few real eureka moments, but this came pretty close.” It’s a hefty but inspiring book that chronicles Doudna’s and others’ development of the gene-editing tool CRISPR. That’s exactly the feeling you’ll have while reading Walter Isaacson’s marvelous biography The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race. When Doudna read James Watson’s book The Double Helix as a sixth grader, she realized that “science can be very exciting, like being on a trail of a cool mystery and you’re getting a clue here and a clue there.

Instead, Doudna followed her passion and pursued biochemistry, inspired by her childhood explorations of beaches, meadows and lava flow caves in her hometown of Hilo, Hawaii. Thank goodness Jennifer Doudna didn’t listen to her high school guidance counselor, who told her that girls don’t do science.

The code breaker doudna