THIS BOOK BEGAN WITH an article I published in the New York Times Magazine in 2016. I want to thank Claire Gutierrez, my editor at the Times Magazine, for seeing the possibility in the story. Bob Weil at Liveright read that story and saw the possibility for a book. I will always be grateful for his vision and belief in the project. I will also always be grateful for Daniel Gerstle’s extraordinary—and extraordinarily thorough—editing. It frightens me to think of how this book might have turned out without his guidance. Everything I publish is a credit to my wonderful agent, Dan Lazar.
The story I’ve told in this book is built upon the remarkable scholarship of those who came before me. Petra Gentz-Werner, a German scientist and science historian, has written a number of excellent books on Otto Warburg in German. In the course of writing my own book, I reached out to her for assistance again and again. The German historian and Otto Warburg expert Kärin Nickelsen was also extraordinarily kind and patient with my pestering questions. The journalist Gary Taubes wrote about many of the scientific topics in this book years before I did. His work and friendship have been hugely important to me. The wonderful and incredibly generous chemist Willem H. Koppenol was there for me whenever I got stuck and needed help. Although I do not know him personally, Stanford historian Robert Proctor’s research on Nazi Germany and cancer politics had a major influence on this book.
I could not have written this book without the help of two amazing research and translation assistants. Japhet Johnstone got me started. Dillon Bergin got me to the finish line. Their friendship turned out to be one of the best parts of this entire process. I also want to thank Haley Bracken at Liveright for managing the production process so well and Janet Greenblatt for her great copy editing. Sara Manning Peskin, Adina Singer, Sharon Christner, Paula Nedved, and Elaine Lissner were kind enough to read drafts of my manuscript. Their feedback was invaluable. My archival research was greatly helped by Thomas Notthoff and his colleagues at the Archives of the Max Planck Society as well as by Kanisha Greaves at the Rockefeller Archive Center. Frederic Burk was kind enough to let me into his home to search through old papers and photographs. Vera Enke and the entire team at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities were also very generous with their time.
It was my good fortune that so many of the world-class scientists I reached out to with questions and interview requests also happen to be world-class people. Chi Van Dang, Matthew Vander Heiden, Navdeep Chandel, Carol Prives, and Jeffrey Rathmell were exceptionally helpful. The legendary photosynthesis researcher Govindjee was both a great resource and an inspiration.
During the five years I worked on this book, I found myself in need of support from hundreds of other people, from the assistants who copied documents for me at the various archives I searched, to the scientists and scholars who sat for interviews. In most cases, I was a stranger to these individuals. Their willingness to go out of their way on my behalf meant an enormous amount to me. I am sorry that I do not have the space here to thank everyone (please see dedication), but I would like to mention the following individuals: Peter Attia, Stephanie Auteri, Monika Baark, Paul Barrett, Nir Barzilai, Franzi Becker, Elizabeth Beugg, Brooke Bevis, Kivanç Birsoy, Ewald Blocher, David Botsein, Maik Bozza, Dale Brauner, Karin Buch, Cordelia Calvert, Lewis Cantley, Colin Champ, Travis Christofferson, Jeffrey Chuang, Sharmila Cohen, Dominic D’Agostino, Paul Davies, Ute Deichmann, Victoria Doherty-Munro, Alice Dragoon, Tim Ferriss, Eugene Fine, Barbara Fried, Jason Fung, Bruce Gladden, Sheila Glaser, Nancy Grossman, Susanne Heim, Deborah Hertz, Bettina Hitzer, Dieter Hoffmann, Thomas Hutzelman, James Johnson, Richard Johnson, Mark Johnston, Tanja Johnston, Rudolf Kaaks, Bernard Kaplan, Martin Klingenberg, Young Ko, Robert E. Kohler, Heather Kristofk, Nick Lane, Anja Laukötter, Wolfgang Lefèvre, Derek LeRoith, Valter Longo, David Ludwig, Robert Lustig, Kristie Macrakis, Tak Mak, Beate Meyer, Lia Miller, Judy Moscovitz, Peter Ostendorf, Anna Pamela, Peter Pedersen, Dana Pe’er, Michael Pollak, Sebastian Rasmussen, John Rees, Manfred Rudel, David Sabatini, Katrin Sachs, Susan Sanfrey, Rachael Schechter, Richard Schneider, Thomas Seyfried, Gerald Shulman, Rebecca Siegel, Helmut Sies, Ulrich Siggel, M. Celeste Simon, Vuk Stambolic, Beth Steidle, Kevin Struhl, Rebecca Stuhr, Peter Tarr, Craig Thompson, Susanne Uebele, Annette Vogt, Douglas Wallace, Robert Weinberg, Kathryn Wellen, Vivian Yuxin Wen, Maxine Winer, and Gary Yellen.
Three extraordinary scientists who made the time to speak with me, Richard Veech, George Klein, and Harry Rubin, died during the period I worked on this project. May their memories be a blessing.
I could not have written this book without the love and support of my wife, Jennifer, and my entire family.