The Shaping of Life is Lionel's second book, completed shortly before his death in March 2008. It is in part an update of his earlier volume, Kinetic Theory of Living Pattern (Cambridge University Press, 1993), following developments in the field and in his own research. Lionel was always an energetic individual, both physically and intellectually, climbing mountains and arguing points of scientific theory with equal determination. Those interested will find a tribute covering salient aspects of his personal and professional life in The Globe & Mail for 26 April 2008. He experienced a great loss in the early 1980s with the deaths, within the space of a few weeks, of both his wife and only son. His life afterward was increasingly centred on scientific activities, and he continued with research to retirement and after. This book is a chronicle of his observations and insights during that time, and of the people who influenced him and helped along the way. His proximate goal was to discover how patterns of living things are formed or, to use the title from an earlier draft of this book, ‘how life devises its shapes and sizes’. Though it contains considerable experimental detail, the book is addressed to a non-specialist audience, and especially to those interested in how science is done in a field still in embryo, whose mature form is as yet unknown.