The Guardian has a profile of the "inventor of the pill", who in his later years has turned to fiction as a novelist and playwright: "Carl Djerassi: 'Scientists aren't just Frankensteins or Strangeloves or nerds'".
The piece fits with my recurring writing topic of science in art, and Djerassi's voice is unique:
Above all, he's interested in describing what he calls the "tribal behaviour" of scientists – and he's critical of the scientific community for being reluctant to explain that behaviour to the outside world. "I'm a member of that tribe," he says, "and it's a tribe that does not advertise its behaviour – not because they want to keep it secret, but because they're not interested in discussing it. We're not, as a whole, introspective, because we're so focused on what we're doing. But it means that people outside science have a very limited idea about who we really are, and how we think."
