Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Stanley Falkow in Annual Reviews

This is the time of year when the new Annual Reviews are published. Annual Reviews are among my favorite journals because of the timely content, excellent reviews and occasional historical and/or autobiographical papers.

The current edition of the Annual Review of Microbiology contains an excellent autobiographical account by Stanley Falkow.

Stanley Falkow is microbiologist and a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has published prolifically on the pathogenesis of microbial diseases. In 2008, Falkow received the Lasker Prize for being one of the all-time great microbe hunters.

I particularly like how Falkow closes his account,

"Finally, I realized a number of years ago that in life you never get to have as many dogs as you want or to find out how it all turns out. As you get older and are asked to be a keynote speaker or get an award of some kind, you also realize you are being given credit for things you never did and for attributes you never possessed."

2 comments:

  1. Word to tha Annu Revs. Usually, reading any 35-pager in Annu Revs is a much better investment than reading 100 pages of the ten-page reviews typical elsewhere. IMHO.

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  2. Agreed. So much so that I wish they were Semiannual Reviews ;)

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