'A wonderful book' Bill Bryson 'Ashcroft
achieves the sort of rich simplicity most science
writers can only dream about ... this book carries the
eponymous spark of life' Sunday Telegraph
From before birth to the last breath we draw, from
consciousness to sexual attraction, fighting infection
to the beating of our hearts, electricity is essential
to everything we think and do. In The Spark of
Life award-winning physiologist Frances Ashcroft
reveals the secrets of ion channels, which produce the
electrical signals in our cells. Can someone really die
of fright? How do cocaine, LSD and morphine work? Why do
chilli peppers taste hot? Ashcroft explains all this and
more with wit and clarity. Anyone who has ever wondered
about what makes us human will find this book a
revelation. 'A rare gift for making difficult
subjects accessible and fascinating' Bill Bryson
'She communicates complex science with engaging
passion and eloquence' Helen Dunmore,
Observer 'Compelling and very readable, an
excellent writer' Literary Review 'Riveting
... she has a stock of good tales' New
Scientist 'Lively, conversational prose,
refreshingly accessible to any lay reader ... a
positively charged little book' Daily
Telegraph
Frances Ashcroft is
Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford and
a Fellow of Trinity College Oxford. She is also Director
of OXION, a consortium of scientists studying ion
channels, the heroes of this book. Her scientific
research focuses on how a rise in your blood sugar level
stimulates the release of insulin and what why this
process goes wrong in diabetes. She has won many prizes
for her research, most recently the L'Oreal/UNESCO 2012
Women in Science award. She is also a recipient of the
Lewis Thomas Prize for Science Writing for The Spark
of Life. Her first book for the general reader was
Life at the Extremes: The Science of
Survival.
|
|