In September 1981 the journal Nature asked whether a new book by a Cambridge biochemist should be thrown on a bonfire. This episode follows the man who wrote it, Rupert Sheldrake, from respected plant biologist to one of science's most controversial heretics, and asks why his ideas struck such a deep nerve in the scientific establishment.

Sheldrake co-developed a textbook model of auxin transport before abandoning conventional biochemistry, spending time in an Indian ashram, and proposing morphic resonance, the idea that nature has evolving habits and inherited memory rather than fixed laws. His grassroots experiments on dogs and the sense of being stared at drew both public fascination and sharp scientific rebuttal.

• Editor John Maddox attacked his 1981 book as pseudoscience and argued morphic resonance was unfalsifiable
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