Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize

Carroll (molecular biology & genetics, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison; Remarkable Creatures), a National Book Award finalist and winner of a Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award, deftly weaves science and history together in his account of the lives, accomplishments, and friendship of two exceptional men. Writer-philosopher Albert Camus and genetic scientist Jacques Monod lived in dramatic times, in occupied France, with Camus editing an undergound newspaper and Monod running operations for a Resistance army. They met and became friends after the war. Years later, both responded vocally to the Russians' crushing of the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Wrote Camus, "I have known only one true genius: Jacques Monod." Both received the Nobel Prize: Camus (literatures) in 1957, Monod (physiology) in 1965. Both were public men in the best sense of the phrase and held similar views of the human condition in a wholly secularized world. At Camus's tragic death in 1960, Monod was still aiding refugees, e.g., a biologist and her husband escaping Hungary. When asked why he'd helped, he said, "It's a question of human dignity." Although Carroll is a scientist, science is not overly intrusive in this book; there is an appendix for those who want more such details.