Anthony R. Rees,The Antibody Molecule: From Antitoxins to Therapeutic Antibodies

Abstract

Anthony Rees' book about the antibody molecule reads like an extended review of the current molecular knowledge of antibodies. The author was himself working in the field of molecular immunology and therefore has the required scientific expertise for his decidedly ‘chronological approach’ (preface). In the field of history, however, he openly declares to be ‘an amateur’ (preface). Within the historical literature on immunology, his book is therefore comparable to Leslie B. Brent's History of Transplantation Immunology, which also provides the reader with a rich apparatus of sources, but with almost no secondary literature.1 The only books on the history of immunology to which Rees refers are Arthur Silverstein's A History of Immunology and Pauline Mazumdar's Species and Specificity.2 Nevertheless, The Antibody Molecule can be a useful source for historians of science and medicine, since no concise history of molecular immunology up to the year 2014 has been written so far. As the book traces the history of an object that is central to modern immunology, that is, the antibody, it will be of value to historians of immunology who want to get an overview of research questions and theories about the structure of the antibody and the mechanism of the antibody–antigen reaction in a long-term perspective.