Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior is a book by American non-fiction writer Jonathan Weiner, published in 1999.

The book is a biography of California Institute of Technology biologist Seymour Benzer, who is recognized as one of the pioneers of genetics and molecular biology.

In 1946, he read Erwin Schrodinger's highly influential book What Is Life?, which described the nature of genes as known in the 1940s as "the great unsolved mystery of biology".

For the next several years he worked with Delbrück and his phage group, and Andre Lwoff, Francois Jacob, and Jacques Monod at the Pasteur Institute.

Benzer spent the next 10 years studying the rII region of phage mutants, as it was found to be very suitable and "an extraordinarily sensitive and simple assay" for detection of rare crossing-over events in a gene.

Charles Jennings in his 1999 review for Nature Neuroscience wrote that the science in the book is "for the most part, accurate and clearly explained" and noted that "it is remarkable how much intellectual history has been spanned in Benzer's career".

"[a] One more flaw highlighted in the review is Weiner's treatment of the three titular mutations as "parallel and equal stories"; in Jan's view the work on Drosophila "points the way and provides the conceptual framework for the study of clocks in other organisms", but, in comparison, it contributed less into fields of learning and memory.

Despite these points, Jan called Time, Love, and Memory "a terrific book that will appeal to a wide range of readers.

[2] Kirkus Reviews wrote that Weiner is good in "explaining the science with you-are-there descriptions of lab life and personalities" and "telling anecdotes that reveal the humor, quirks, frustration, anger, and rewards of being a scientist".

Due to the highly private life he led, his unusual dusk to dawn working hours, and his tendency to keep to the fringes of scientific research, Benzer's story has long gone unheralded."