We live in a dancing matrix of viruses; they dart, rather like bees, from organism to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, transplanting grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party.

(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.