BOOK REVIEWS 591

Most importantly, they point out that this procedure is a screening test, not a diagnostic
one. This concept as well as the implications of cut-off levels for normal vs. abnormal
must be understood by primary-care providers as well as those to whom patients will be
referred. The wide-spread application of MS-AFP may be one of the most powerful
methods to detect fetal abnormalities, as witnessed by reports of its use to detect fetuses
at risk for other than neural tube defects.
Application of recombinant DNA methodologies are dealt with in two chapters by
Michael McCormick and Byron Burlingham. They both point out the exciting realities
and possibilities of this new technology. However, much work needs to be done to
simplify the procedures before they can become widely available.
Other techniques with more limited application such as fetoscopy, embryoscopy,
echocardiography, and fetal therapy are discussed by the contributors in the context of
what has been done thus far and what expectations we may have from them.
Overall, the editors have achieved their goal and have produced a readable, practical
guide to prenatal diagnosis. It should be recommended reading for anyone involved with
the care of women and their pregnancies.
BRUCE W. KoVACS
LACIUSC Women's Hospital
Los Angeles

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Adventures of a Curious Character. By R. P.

FEYNMAN. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1985. Pp. 350. $16.95.
While at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics, I went to a
bookstore across the street from the Hotel Utah and bought this book by Richard
Feynman. From the dust jacket I knew Feynman was not a geneticist, not a biologist of
any sort, but the 1965 Nobel Prize winner in physics. I figured that at least he is a
scientist, so it's all right to read science at a scientific meeting.
One of the first surprises is that Feynman did not write this book. He told it. It is a
transcript of conversations Feynman held over a 7-year period with his friend, Ralph
Leighton, and the book has the inimitable ring of conversation. The tone is informal,
casual, unconventional, and varies from uncontained humor to unexpected seriousness.
Just as you might expect talk to be. Yet, there are few, if any, unnecessary words. The
late E. B. White would like this book. It is pithy, economical, and rich.
Another surprise is the love of science conveyed by Feynman. At 3:30 or 4:00 in the
morning, Feynman had a telephone call. "Professor Feynman?" He answered: "Hey!
Why are you bothering me at this time in the morning?" The voice continued: "I
thought you'd like to know that you've won the Nobel Prize." "Yeah, but I'm sleeping.
It would have been better if you had called me in the morning." And Feynman hung up.
Later that day, Feynman became a nervous wreck over whether to accept the award (he
did) and what to say in Stockholm. He started his acceptance speech by saying: "I had
already received my prize in the pleasure I got in discovering what I did, from the fact
that others used my work...."
Even as a child Feynman clearly loved to solve problems. The book opens with
Feynman at age 11 or 12 fixing neighbors' radios. And later he gets into deciphering
Mayan hieroglyphics. This need to solve problems and to explore the universe is a main
impulse and, in fact, a compulsion.
Feynman went to graduate school at Princeton. There he explored. In the graduate
592 BOOK REVIEWS
dining room he sat not with his fellow physicists but with philosophers and later with
biologists to find out what they were thinking and doing. Then while teaching physics at
Caltech (he is still there), he thought to "just hang around the biology lab." Bob Edgar,
a post-doc, instead gave him a problem to work on. The problem involved back muta-
tions in phage. The problem so interested Feynman that he spent his sabbatical year in
the same lab with Matt Meselson working on ribosomes.
A concrete result of Feynman's foray into molecular genetics was not a paper, but a
technique. He learned to hold a test tube and take its top off with the same hand. Now
he found he could hold the toothpaste and take its top off and put it back on with the
same hand.
Having satisfied his curiosity about molecular biology, he returned to physics. But not
until he had given a seminar in biology for James Watson at Harvard.
Science has changed for many of us. We are serious about our scientific interests and
joyless in the race to obtain grants. We often confine ourselves to one demarcated field.
We write up our results in prose only another worker in our field can read (and none will
enjoy). Science is no joking matter.
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" gives a look at science as pleasure, at some of
its funny sides. The fun of science may still be there, if we wish it.
FREDERICK HECHT
The Genetics Center
Southwest Biomedical Research Institute
Tempe, Arizona