Después de varios años, lo terminé, si me gustó pero es complejo y difícil de leer.

Nice biography of an eminent neuroscientist. Healthy doses of neuroscience, science history and personal life. I enjoyed the perspective on what it was like to approach studying the mind and specifically memory in the 50's. Kandel couldn't address his original goals of understanding the mammalian brain and memory systems to help psychiatric patients directly and instead explored principles of cell biology. His original goals are no seeming addressable thanks to his and others work.

This is a fascinating journey of a life dedicated to science. Kandel starts with his early memories in Vienna, as well as his escape from the Nazi regime to the US as a child, and goes to to talk about his early fascination with psychoanalysis, and his career as a researcher in neural science that eventually led him to earn a Nobel prize. While autobiographical, the book also provides a solid history of neuroscience: Golgi's cell biology, Cajal and the neuron doctrine, Hodkin and Huxley's model of how neurons "fire" in the brain and of course Kandel's own discoveries on the neurobiological basis of short-term and long-term memory.

His Nobel journey and the conclusion where he shares his ideas about the future of the science of mind were especially enjoyable for me.

I also liked how this story, which starts in Vienna, sort of comes full circle when he talks about his more recent (and understandably awkward) relationship with Austria after he has won the Nobel prize. It is a difficult topic, but a history of science would not be complete without discussing it, since we have so many great minds such as Freud, Popper and Kandel himself, as well as many others who had to (and were lucky enough to be able to) escape from the horrors of the Nazi regime.

I think anyone interested in doing science, especially in the field of neuroscience will be deeply inspired and gain invaluable insight by reading this book.

A unique blend of memoir and science describing Kandel’s (Nobel prize winner for Physiology or Medicine in 2000) quest for memory both at the personal and scientific level.
Kandel, a 9 year old Jew in Vienna in 1938, starts his book with his memories of Anschluss and Kristallnacht, describes the vividness of these memories and how years later they made him interested in why and how certain memories are remembered while others are lost. Throughout his career, he tackled brain and memory research at different levels from molecular biology to psychoanalysis, his most groundbreaking research being on Aplysia, a sea snail with very simple, yet molecularly big nervous system. All stages of this research are described exquisitely well in the book.

Extremely informative and enlightening on all levels. I could have lived without some parts of the personal account, though. In particular, I had a bit of a problem with the overly self-righteous tone of some of his personal tales.

Link: Kandel’s lecture on memory loss and aging
http://www.iwf.de/iwf/do/mkat/details.aspx?Signatur=C 12884

4.5/5