• Fi­nally, Farewell to "Stamp Col­lect­ing"...

    by Christoph Weigel — The per­spec­tive pa­per by Mar­garet Mc­Fall-Ngai and col­leagues was re­cently fea­tured by Elio in this blog, strongly em­pha­siz­ing its Chicx­u­lub-like im­pact on mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy. Here I of­fer a post­script, a few loosely con­nected thoughts from a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive about its im­pact on bi­ol­ogy and life sci­ences in gen­eral…

  • Why Med­ical Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy Is Not..

    ...Like Stamp Col­lect­ing by Elio — I started teach­ing mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy to med­ical stu­dents in 1958, at a time when bio­med­ical sci­ence was in its full as­cen­dancy. Grant money was there prac­ti­cally for the ask­ing, jobs were plen­ti­ful, uni­ver­si­ties and their med­ical schools were fre­net­i­cally build­ing up their sci­ence base. Not en­tirely sur­pris­ing, the gen­eral feel­ing of young…