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A PORTRAIT OF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM
Scientific Publications of N K Jerne
edited by Ivan Lefkovits (Basel Institute for Immunology, Switzerland)
Ivan Lefkovits was born in 1937 and educated in Prague where he worked at the Academy of Sciences. He has lived in Italy, where he worked at the International Laboratory of Genetics and Biophysics, Naples. In 1967 he joined Niels Jerne at the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Frankfurt. In 1969 he became a founding member of the Basel Institute for Immunology, which was created by the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Basel, who had the good sense to appoint Niels Jerne as the first director of the Institute; Ivan Lefkovits was a close friend and colleague of Niels Jerne throughout the years in Frankfurt and Basel, and also after Niels Jerne's retirement in south of France.
Using the published work of Nobel Laureate Niels Kaj Jerne, this book shows how he developd his ideas. The book is a compilation of his published work, but in fact it is much more than that. Whether the reader wants to read the book systematically, or only browse, it opens a fascinating world of hypotheses, theories, facts and vistas. His selection theory, his view of how immunological diversity is created, and his concept of lymphocytes interacting as a network, reveals Jerne's revolutionary spirit. The book ought to be a rich source of inspiration for everyone interested in science and how science is made.
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