The authors explain how research on the origin of life became wedded to the serach for life on other planets and for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Steven J. Dick is the Chief Historian at NASA and associate editor of the International Journal of Astrobiology. Among his books are Sky and Ocean Joined: The U.S. Naval Observatory, 1830-2000, and Life on Other Worlds, which has been translated into four languages. James E. Strick is the author of Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation. He is an assistant professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Franklin and Marshall College.
All that has happened in the brief history of astrobiology is but a prelude to some of the most important future discoveries in the history of science and philosophy. This book is the only place where you can find out what really happened in the struggle to make astrobiology respectable. - Frank Drake, senior scientist and director of the Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute "This is a wonderful book by two of the best historians of biology in the business." - Michael Ruse, author of Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose?"