Privileged Hands
A Scientific Life
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
His fingers move across the surface of a shell, feeling the ridges and contours, searching for clues, gathering information unnoticed by the untrained eye. For Dr. Geerat Vermeij's fingers are his eyes. One of the most accomplished evolutionary biologists of our time and the world's leading authority on an ancient "arms race" among mollusks, Dr. Vermeij is blind.
No ordinary autobiography, Privileged Hands is the story of Dr. Vermeij's challenge and triumph. What makes his story so compelling is how he sees and what his insights reveal about the wonder of life on planet Earth. His exhaustive research of ancient and living mollusks, particularly shells, is extraordinary in its scope and perspective about how species arm themselves, compete, and survive. This is an intriguing irony for someone whose incomparable story is characterized by an unfailing determination to thrive in a sighted world and in the world of science. For Dr. Vermeij's self-portrait is also a portrait of the practice of science--his views on evolution and biodiversity, and the importance of observation are as much the story as are his family relationships, education, and position on arritmative action.
Privileged Hands is provocative and intelligent storytelling: it reveals as much about our own lives as it does about this one, remarkable, scientist's life.
" 'Uplifting' may smack of sentimentality, but Vermeij's life story surely is uplifting—and it contributes importantly to evolutionary science." - Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This gets off to a slow start: the beginning section is weighted down with labored accounts of each teacher, class and playmate of the author's childhood. However, readers should persevere: this is an absolutely delightful memoir, tracing the intellectual development and career of a distinguished and consummately likable evolutionary biologist. Vermeij was born in Holland; his parents emigrated to America in 1955, when he was nine, in part because they wanted the best possible education for their son, who was bright, gifted--and blind. Propelled by his sharp intellect, will and bountiful curiosity, Vermeij turned his childhood fascination with shells into a rewarding career. A critic of affirmative action, he maintains that he never wanted to be held to different standards than his classmates or colleagues, and has often battled prejudice about the abilities of the blind. He here recounts a rich life, filled with teaching, researching, writing books and papers and editing scientific journals. But it is clearly fieldwork that impassions him the most. He is in his element wading through tidal pools in his sneakers, accompanied by his wife or daughter or a research assistant, identifying by touch the species that inhabit the intertidal zone. Vermeij, who teaches at UC-Davis, offers an interesting exploration of the "cold war" between crabs and snails, a classic example of parallel evolution: the claws of the former become more massive and powerful as the shells of their prey thicken to repel predators. He makes evolution accessible, reminding us that we are caught up in its sweep no less than the fossilized brachiopods in his collection. Vermeij occasionally indulges in atrocious puns, but on the whole his prose is clean and direct, even lyrical at times, as when he writes of shell-seeking expeditions on tropical shores. His autobiography will offer untold encouragement to those facing the challenge of a physical disability.
