Becker the Researcher

The story told here by Robert O. Becker’s most accomplished student is a thrilling intellectual adventure and a tragedy in the classic sense. Becker’s great strengths were his independence and courage, his visionary scientific insights, his single-mindedness, his devotion to his patients, and his contempt for the ignorance and time-serving that he felt had poisoned biology and medicine. These qualities warred with his flaws and led to humiliating defeats that prevented recognition of his work and acceptance of his ideas. He was a poor fit for a scientific establishment based on blind, unquestioning adherence to orthodoxy. He was on a heroic quest in an unheroic time; his character and choices as well as the folly of the times led to the tragic end of his career.