Tom Rivers: reflections on a life in medicine and science

In the last few months of his life, an eminent pioneer in the field of virology looks back over his eventful career and through the medium of oral history leaves behind him an authoritative account of the genesis of this important branch of science. The book is a record, edited only for reading convenience, of a series of tape-recorded interviews of the late Dr. Thomas M. Rivers of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. The interviewer, Saul Benison, is a historian of medicine and science who equipped himself for the task through extensive research in hitherto unused primary source materials. What merges is an autobiography presented in Dr. Rivers' conversational style, reflecting his colorful personality, and spanning a long and eventful period of biomedical investigation.