Cantor's Dilemma: A Novel

Science is a human endeavor, with all the messiness that humanity entails. Cantor's Dilemma is fiction, but author Carl Djerassi is a noted scientist, and his depiction of research and the scientific community is dead accurate. More than a hundred science studies papers, this book put a human face on the complications of shared authorship, trust and betrayal between partners, battles of ego over prestige and priority, and why repeatability and personal integrity are absolutely central to good science.

One caveat, Cantor's Dilemma can get a little racy in sections, in ways that may help to accelerate the narrative, but which are ultimately distracting. This book is a product of a time and place (1989), were gender politics were a weighty show more issue in academia, and I want a second opinion on how the female characters have aged. show less

mostly well-written snapshot of academic life for scientists mashed with a little intrigue and a kind of "whodunit" for researchers. the book takes off slowly and divulges its secrets slowly but i ended up being engaged by the politics surrounding the attempted assault on the Everest or K2 of scholarship: the Nobel Prize (all metaphors borrowed from the book).

i did find the treatment of the female characters a bit stilted and perhaps a little heavy-handedly portrayed as strong and independent women. one character in particular struck me as a very 2-dimensional depiction of a single adult female. this was Djerassi's first novel, however, and the training wheels show. even within the course of the book, the storytelling improves and yet show more never really seems to pull story threads together to weave a single whole. at the end, i wasn't sure what it wanted to be and there were several unanswered questions. show less

The politics of trying to win a Nobel Prize and, secondarily, of young women trying to get tenure. The dilemma did not seem that difficult to me. The ideas explored seemed more interesting than the story or people.

The author has a major idea about "science in art" and this is a fine example. The novel is set in in contemporary times (it was written in the 1980's, so the computing and telephony technologies are dated.) The story centers on two research scientists that collaborate on work that wins them the Nobel prize in medicine. One learns quite a bit about the prize and the ceremonies. Quite a bit of scientific thinking is involved, but the drama involves issues of honesty and trust between individuals of unequal authority and recognition. There are parallel plots involving the friends and lovers of the central pair. I learned quite a bit and was quite entertained, finishing the book quickly. I look forward to other writings by Djerasi.

ספר מתח מדעי. כנראה שלא עשה עלי רושם גדול כי אני לא זוכר כלום