SIGNED BY NOBELIST. Reflections on Muscle

Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1981. Second printing (1st 1980).

FAMOUS LECTURES BY NOBELIST ANDREW HUXLEY WHO WITH ALAN HODGKIN DISCOVERED THE MECHANISM OF MUSCLE CONTRACTION--INSCRIBED TO NOTED SCIENCE HISTORIAN EVELYN FOX KELLER.

8 3/4 inches tall hardcover, black cloth binding, gilt title to cover and spine, inscribed front free endpaper, "For Prof. Evelyn Fox Keller/ with best wishes/ Andrew Huxley/ August 2001," ix, 111pp, fine in very good original glassine cover.

SIR ANDREW FIELDING HUXLEY (1917 – 2012) was an English physiologist and biophysicist. He was born into the prominent Huxley family. After graduating from Westminster School in Central London, from where he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, he joined Alan Lloyd Hodgkin to study nerve impulses. Their eventual discovery of the basis for propagation of nerve impulses (called an action potential) earned them the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1963. They made their discovery from the giant axon of the Atlantic squid. In 1952, he was joined by a German physiologist Rolf Niedergerke. Together they discovered in 1954 the mechanism of muscle contraction, popularly called the "sliding filament theory", which is the foundation of our modern understanding of muscle mechanics. In 1960 he became head of the Department of Physiology at University College London. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1955, and President in 1980. Reflections on Muscle (offered here) is based on the Sherrington Lectures for 1976-7 delivered by Huxley at the University of Liverpool. CONTENTS: I. History: An example of negative progress; II. Mystery: What makes the filaments slide?

PROVENANCE: EVELYN FOX KELLER (born March 20, 1936) is an American physicist, author and feminist. She is Professor Emerita of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller's early work concentrated at the intersection of physics and biology. Her subsequent research has focused on the history and philosophy of modern biology and on gender and science.