Professor Matthew Cobb

A TIMES ENVIRONMENT AND SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 'The ideal guide to what is not just a fiendishly complex area of science but also an ethical minefield' Mail on Sunday A new gene editing technology, invented just seven years ago, has turned humanity into gods. Enabling us to manipulate the genes in virtually any organism with exquisite precision,...

'Cobb is a rare jewel' - Adam Rutherford Crick was a restless, relentless thinker, as fascinated by Beat poetry and psychedelics as the genetic meaning of life and the inner workings of the brain. Yet, for all his drive, he was galvanised by collaboration: with Jim Watson on DNA, with artists in Cambridge and California, and with his wife Odile,...

AN ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN AND CHURCH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR Winner of the Hatchards First Biography Prize 2025 'The definitive backstory of one of the towering figures of 20th-century science' – Guardian 'Brilliant and inspiring. A landmark biography' – Adam Rutherford Francis Crick was a restless, relentless thinker, as fascinated by Beat poetry and psychedelics as the genetic meaning of...

Longlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize This is the story of our quest to understand the most mysterious object in the universe: the human brain. Today we tend to picture it as a computer. Earlier scientists thought about it in their own technological terms: as a telephone switchboard, or a clock, or all manner of fantastic mechanical or hydraulic...