We are not made up, as we had always supposed, of successively enriched packets of our own parts. We are shared, rented, occupied. At the interior of our cells, driving them, providing the oxidative energy that sends us out for the improvement of each shining day, are the mitochondria, and in a strict sense they are not ours.

(He also won a Christopher Award for that book. He also publiLewis Thomasd a book on entomology entitled Et Cetera Et Cetera poems and numerous scientific papers. In its first paperback edition The Medusa and the Snail won another National Book Award in Science.

Lewis Thomas (November 25 1913 – December 3 1993) was a physician poet etymologist essayist administrator educator policy advisor and researcher. (He also won a Christopher Award for that book. The Lewis Thomas Prize is awarded annually by The Rockefeller University to a scientist for artistic achievement.