Why Im Like Dad | N. Luchnik

Why do cats give birth to kittens, lions to lion-cubs, and rabbits to baby rabbits?
Why do human children, too, not only outwardly look like their parents, but also resemble them in character and disposition?
Why are twins as like as two peas or quite different?
Why are some babies born monsters? Can man remake animals and plants to order?
Questions like those are the field of this book. It describes the quests that led to major discoveries in genetics, and the obstacles encountered by researches, and tells about the scientists who study heredity, and how to change it. The author, a prominent biologist himself, takes the reader to research laboratories, farm fields, and hospitals, opening up before him the whole broad field of modern genetics. Why I'm Like Dad received the award of the USSR Society for the Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge (Znaniye) for the best popular science writing in 1967.

Contents
PROLOGUE 7
The Professor v the Canon 7

POSTHUMOUS FAME 13

The Great Mystery 13
Vesicles and Cells 15
The Academy Sponsors a Contest 19
Academies and Science 24
Johann Becomes Gregor 27
Laws of Nature 31
The Game of Dice 35
A Mad Hypothesis 39
The Abbot of St. Thomas' Monastery 44
Sixteen Years On 48

FLIES AND ELEPHANTS 52

Like in a Film 52
The Dance of the Chromosomes 55
The Halving Process 57
Hypothesis Becomes Theory 59
The Vinegar Fly 62
The Map of Heredity 66
Show Me a Gene 70
How Does It Happen? 77

THE LAWS OF VARIETY 81

The Story of a Suicide 81
An Engineer Challenges a Scientist 87
New But Long Forgotten 91
Geneticists Get to Work 94
The Fate of a White Crow 101
The Great Synthesis 105
A New Lease of Life 111
Creators of Abundance 116

GENES UNDER FIRE 118

A Fortress Surrenders 118
Insidious Rays 125
Atomic Firing Range 127
The Birth of a Science 133
A Riddle Answered 138
From Iodine to Yperite 142
Revival of Cell 148
Danger Retreats 153
For the Good of Man 159

MOLECULES THAT REPRODUCE THEMSELVES

An Unexpected Toast 165
Leo Tolstoy and the 'Things' 170
Azimov's Law 174
Form and Substance 179
Self-replicating Molecules? 181
Suspicion Falls on Nucleic Acid 186
Evidence Piles Up 190

CINDERELLA BECOMES A PRINCESS 198

Molecules Duplicate Themselves 198
Checking the Hypothesis 204
The Theoreticians Take Over 210
Man-made Nucleic Acids 216 Nirenberg's Triumph 222

THE ABC OF HEREDITY 226

After the Ball 226
A Sensation 232
I Look For a Pattern 235
Further Difficulties 237
The Three Roads 241

WHY I'M LIKE DAD, AFTER ALL? 250

Three Effective Principles 250
Knight's Move 253
Wiser Than Solomon 259
Genes and Man 262