Description:
Longlisted for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
An Economist Best Book of 2024
Exploring the most transformative breakthroughs in biology since the discovery of the double helix, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist unveils the RNA age.
Brief description: Thomas R. Cech is distinguished professor of biochemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His honors include the Nobel Prize and the National Medal of Science. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Review Quotes: Lively and entertaining. . . . In [The Catalyst], the machinations of RNA emerge as a core feature of what makes us human. We appear to be at the beginning of a conceptual enlightenment in biology--an 'age of RNA, ' as Mr. Cech calls it. Biology will never be the same.--Adrian Woolfson "Wall Street Journal"