HALDANE, J. B. S. The Inequality of Man. London, Chatto and Windus,1932.
8vo. Original cloth with typographical dust-wrappers (not price-clipped); ix, 295, [4, publisher's catalogue]; margins of wrappers a little chipped; a very good copy.
Very are first edition, first printing with the even rarer wrappers. John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, without any higher scientific degree became one of the leading geneticists and lecturers at Cambridge wo coined the terms clone and cloning. A public speaker and radical his influence reached from Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) to science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, who called Haldane 'perhaps the most brilliant science populariser of his generation'. For others he was simply a phenomenal mind. He was described as 'the last man who might know all there was to be known'. The essays collected here vary greatly in theme and content, and include a review of the writings of Bertrand Russell, chapters on birth control and ‘If Jesus Lived Today’, and a short work of fiction entitled ‘The Gold-Makers’, included here as 'it is rather unlikely that I should ever write enough fiction to fill a volume' (preface). 'But in spite of this heterogeneity, a single idea runs through the book: How does science affect human life?' (inside front flap). Several articles deal with human evolution and genetics, naturally.
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