In this book, Dr Austin presents an engaging account of his personal odyssey as a neurological investigator. Drawing on his own experience as well as on illustrative incidents in the lives of other investigators, he offers a penetrating analysis of the factors that play a role in medical research. Briefly stated, his thesis is that creative achievement, as reflected in important medical discoveries, it is not likely to result from the operation of any single factor, such as creative imagination, dogged persistence, or extraordinary drive and curiosity, but rather from the interaction of all of them, with Dame Fortune or chance more often than not playing a decisive role as catalyst. As the author himself states, he has chosen to emphasize "the more capricious side of discovery."
The point is illustrated in a dozen different ways. For example, Judy and James Austin's deep commitment to the cause of world peace