ETA: Well…as long as the previous post baited and switched, here’s something a bit different:
Sixty-seven years ago today, three papers appeared in the scientific literature. One was by Maurice Wilkins, Alexander Stokes and Herbert Wilson, on the “Molecular structure of deoxypentose nucleic acids;” one was authored by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling–“Molecular configuration in sodium thymonucleate;” and the third, or rather the first on this theme in Nature 171, (4356): “Molecular structure of nucleic acids; a structure of deoxyribose nucleic acid,” by two young researchers in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, James Watson and Francis Crick.
That last, of course, was the first published report of the double helical structure of DNA, from whence so much has flowed.
As always, from me, a special shout-out to family connection Rosalind Franklin. There’s a complicated chain of ties involving cousins and marriages and so forth, which boils down to my mum and Franklin being members of the same clan. Franklin died before I was born, but she and mum were good enough friends that she visited with my family on her one trip to Berkeley in the mid 50s. (Which I learned about in Brenda Maddox’s excellent Franklin biography.)
So I always bristle a little at celebrating Crick and Watson, but the reality remains: they found the structure and published it. That moment, all those decades ago, wasn’t the instant at which modern molecular biology was born; it was, however, a genuine watershed event, a before-is-different-from-after instant that distinguishes our intellectual world from what went before.
To me, Crick is the true giant of that pair. He not only solved the structure in tandem with Watson, he went on to do fundamental work on the “software” side, figuring out how DNA encodes genetic information. I only met him once, and didn’t get the chance to have much of an exchange, but it was clear even on that brief encounter that his was what you call a fierce intelligence: he just didn’t stop thinking with full concentration. Very impressive. (Great stuff on all this in Horace Judson’s classic The Eighth Day of Creation.)
I’ve spent more time with Watson, as it happens, mostly because of an odd project I was involved with in 2000 and 2001, for which he was an advisor. The peak experience was being invited out to Cold Spring Harbor to meet with him so he could pressure me to do something I didn’t want to (and didn’t)–after which he flipped into raconteuring host mode over lunch in his private dining room, complete with a very nice white wine from his personal collection. (Which I could only sip, as I had to drive all the way back to Manhattan.)
I’d actually met him a few years earlier, at a party for a NOVA film about Watson’s friend Judah Folkman, who did pioneering work on cancer angiogenesis. I walked up to him and said how glad I was to meet him, and by the way I was Franklin’s cousin. (Not quite accurate, but who was going to say so.) He was shaking my hand as I said that and he got this spooked look on his face and said something anodyne about her. What I didn’t know is that my big brother had also met him for the first time a week or so earlier on the west coast, and had done exactly the same thing. Watson, I hope, was suddenly struck by the fear that Rosalind’s family was stalking him…;-)
All that old gossip aside, DNA is a big deal. (RNA too, as these days we all know to our sorrow). So go dance the twist while drinking one of these.
Gustave Klimpt, The Kiss, 1907-8.
ThresherK
What you didn’t know you needed to see: Gerbils looking at Klimt’s The Kiss, and more, at a gerbil art museum.
schrodingers_cat
Cool story and thanks for sharing. How’s Tikka?
WereBear
Grabbed that bio, thanks!
lamh36
One of my favorite subjects is Genetics. And if there is one thing I can do with my eyes closed, is talk about DNA and DNA replication, since so much of my work that is automated are PCR devices.
WaterGirl
@ThresherK: I would go to that museum!
Catherine D.
Everyone should give a filthy look both for Franklin’s sake and Watson’s appalling racist crap.
Elizabelle
@ThresherK: I loved that gerbil museum. The guests had eaten the furniture and left the artwork alone. At that time.
WaterGirl
@ThresherK: That looks like an interesting site. What did you click on to find the gerbil art museum?
Juice Box
Buona Festa della Liberazione!
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: Just google gerbil art gallery, and all manner of links.
Per Bored Panda link, Gerbils are 9 month old brothers.
Filippo and Marianna crafted “The Gerbil Museum” using paper and cardboard, combining their artistic skills to recreate 4 famous paintings: Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”, Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, Munch’s “The Scream”, and Klimt’s “The Kiss”. Then, they let their two 9-month-old pet gerbils, Pandoro and Tiramisù, explore their creation.
Elizabelle
And, of course, the gerbils have their own Instagram. They are named after desserts.
Kent
Yes, Rosalind Franklin is one of the many great women in science from whom credit was stolen by men.
Marie Tharp is another one from the same era who I always discuss when I teach Oceanography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Tharp
japa21
The Getty Museum had requested people recreate famous paintings to deal with being sheltered in place. This Kiss was one of those. Note the accessories.
John H. McDonald
Long-time reader, first-time commenter, with a story for DNA Day:
I was working in a lab at the University of Chicago one day in 1992 when an older man wandered in and started looking around. He was wearing a rumpled suit that looked like he could have slept in it, and he had one of those odd pot bellies that formerly gaunt people sometimes get with age. I didn’t know whether he was a bum off the street looking to steal syringes, or an eccentric alum who might give the University a bunch of money, so I decided to humor him.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“I took Botany in this lab,” he said. “I got a B–I wasn’t good at drawing the flowers.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s a research lab now.”
“What kind of research do you do?” he said.
I explained that we studied D-N-A, enunciating each letter clearly, and he smiled and nodded like he was someone who glanced through the science section of the newspaper. “What do you do with DNA?” he asked. I explained that we studied changes in DNA, that some changes in the DNA would change proteins and others wouldn’t, and that we looked at differences in DNA between species and within species as a way of finding evidence for natural selection. Basically, I was carefully explaining the research I did without using the words gene, sequence, codon, synonymous, mutation, polymorphism, or allele.
The old man kept smiling and nodding, like he either understood what I was saying or was just being polite. Just then a gregarious Australian post-doc walked into the lab. “G’day,” he said, holding out his hand gregariously, “I’m Bill Ballard.”
“Hello,” said the old man, “I’m Jim Watson.”
Needless to say, I turned beet red, mumbled my apologies, and left Bill and Jim to chat.
There’s a postscript: As you can imagine, I dined out on that story for many years, and in my telling, there were just two people in the lab, me and Jim, until Bill Ballard walked in. But then at a conference I was talking to Marta Wayne, who’d been a grad student in the lab, and she indignantly pointed out that she’d been sitting at her desk the whole time, about 10 feet away. And then a few years ago, I found out that Jerry Coyne had been there too. That was a pretty powerful demonstration of the unreliability of eyewitness testimony.
captnkurt
That Spells DNA ’cause it’s a great Jonathon Coulton song
TriassicSands
Yutsano
Every time I see a Klimt I have to show the opening to this anime. The song and the art style are just gorgeous.
crosspalms
The DNAquiri sounds like fun, thanks! My wife has been having occasional Zoom cocktail get-togethers with co-workers, I might try this one for her next time.
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s my Rosalind Franklin story.
Anne Sayre brought Franklin’s story to light in her 1975 book, Rosalind Franklin and DNA: A Vivid View of What It Is Like to be a Gifted Woman in an Especially Male Profession.
At the time, any staff member could propose a speaker for the Tuesday colloquium at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, as it was called at the time. The Tuesday colloquium was a tradition from the Manhattan Project, and all staff members could attend.
I proposed Anne Sayre, and was also the introducer. It may have been a first for the Laboratory to have one woman introduce another at a Tuesday colloquium.
Catherine D.
@Cheryl Rofer: Yay you!
Robert Sneddon
@TriassicSands: Publish or Perish, it’s the way in science.
Rosalind Franklin was reclusive and didn’t reveal much of her work to the outside world. What she did have was really good X-ray crystallography images of DNA thanks in large part to her lab worker, an unsung genius in the art of preparing and exposing samples. Even at the time Crick and Watson had figured out the double-helix model of DNA, Franklin’s ideas on the shape of the molecule were nowhere near the truth even though she had the same raw data as they did.
As for the eternal Nobel Prize argument, she died in 1958 before the award for DNA was announced in 1962 and the Nobels are only awarded to living recipients.
evodevo
“Watson, I hope, was suddenly struck by the fear that Rosalind’s family was stalking him”
Good. He needed a slap upside the head, but I guess you and your brother’s encounters will have to do…after reading what they did to Rosalind, I have always looked upon the pair with a jaundiced eye…
Another Scott
Great topic. Thanks Tom.
Speaking of RNA – COVID-101 – Who is immune to COVID-19?:
Fingers crossed, but it sounds like recovering from the infection is no panacea. It sounds like this is going to be with us for a long time unless there’s some breakthrough.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@John H. McDonald:
FWIW, you probably don’t remember the other people being there because it’s an embarrassing memory and your brain deliberately convinced you that only one other person witnessed your embarrassment rather than it having been in front of a small group. Our brains can be overprotective that way.
Trapped Lurker
@Cheryl Rofer: Congratulations!. Delurkiing to say how much I enjoy your posts and stories. Are you doing any piano these days? I’ve been having lessons on FaceTime, which is working surprisingly well. Chopin helps in time of plague ?
re women in science: I worked for some years at a well-known lab that does space exploration projects for NASA as a (female) proposal manager. It has been cool to watch some of the women I worked with in the ”shadows” gradually emerge & be recognized. At that lab, at least, the scientists in geophysics and aeronautical disciplines include a fair number of amazing and (finally) appropriately recognized scientific women. And they were often kind, humble, and lovely team players in the pressure cooker that is a large proposal for a space mission. I’m retired now, but when I see their successes reported in the press I rejoice.
Mnemosyne
I managed to find two-ply toilet paper at Target this morning, so that was pretty exciting.
#covid19life
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I once attended a wedding at the Athenaeum at Caltech – bride and groom, close family friends, are both neurology researchers, now very well known. They had a symposium instead of a reception afterward (really more of a colloquy, in hindsight). Sir Francis Crick officiated at the ceremony and then gave the opening statement, which doubled as a toast to the couple. The groom talked about neural nets and the bride about her research, and then the bride walked across the hall on her hands – she had worn bloomers under her dress so as not to display the bridal underwear before time.
That wasn’t the only time I met Sir Francis, but it was the only time I’ve seen him mildly inebriated.
Scientists are weird.
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
Close enough to the topic of DNA. The judges will allow it.
Cheryl Rofer
@Trapped Lurker: I am working on piano pretty much alone. My teacher and I talk on the phone and exchange email messages. I’m working on a number of things, including the Bach Sinfonia (Three-Part Invention) No. 9, which is maybe the most difficult. Also some pieces I’ve worked on before but didn’t have them up to where I’d like them to be.
actual historian
@Robert Sneddon: Yeah, no. Franklin’s later work on the structure of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus was world renowned. And she was hardly reclusive with her colleagues at her previous lab in Paris, or at her later lab at Birkbeck College. Raymond Gosling deserves credit for good x-ray crystallography work, which he learned from Franklin. Looking at her lab notebooks from that time, Crick acknowledged after her death that she was “two steps” away from where he and Watson had arrived — while she had been trying to finish the work she had been hired to do before leaving King’s, had been fairly sick for a good while, and had no one to collaborate with in a largely unfriendly environment. Watson and Crick had zero responsibilities, enjoyed access to all kinds of input and ideas, including those of Jerry Donahue who straightened Watson out on the tautomeric forms of purines and pyrimidines, and who “had the same raw data” as Franklin because it was data she had produced — a fact Watson and Crick could not actually acknowledge in their 1953 paper. You need to read Brenda Maddox’s book that Tom mentioned, at least, before offering further hot takes.
Trapped Lurker
@Cheryl Rofer: that Bach is way beyond me—I love it, though. I’m working on a couple of simpler Bach pieces and on the Chopin Mazurka op 17 no 4 in Am. It’s a challenge but exciting to be near the edge of having the whole thing come together. The FaceTime lessons work amazingly well. I prop my phone at the upper end of the keyboard so she can see my hands & shoulders, and she can see what I’m doing. The sound is awful, but I’m learning anyway. When she needs to show me something she sets her iPad someplace so it shows her hands. I feel so much less isolated here in grandma jail when I have a lesson to look forward to!
ThresherK
@WaterGirl: I went to ArtNetdotcom
rikyrah
OT:
Peanut just spent the last 20 minutes grilling me with questions about World War II.
Anyone got a book suggestion for me about WWII that could keep a 12 year old interested?
WaterGirl
@John H. McDonald: We have to be able to laugh at ourselves. Fun story.
Cermet
As I understand the issue, her (Dr. Franklin) x-ray data was used by them without credit. If so, that was very dishonest. I’ve only read the one book so don’t know all the sides.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Is she interested in a specific aspect of it, like the home front or the battles? Or is it a general overall interest?
At that age, I was interested in what it was like as a civilian, so I read stuff like Judy Blume’s “And Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself,” which also addresses American anti-Semitism and I think also touches on the Holocaust near the end since Sally and her family are Jewish.
Bobby Thomson
Q: What did Watson & Crick discover?
A: Rosalind Franklin’s notes.
Mnemosyne
@Bobby Thomson:
I can’t imagine why a dude who believes in eugenics would think it’s okay to crib from a woman scientist’s notes and claim her insights as his own.
Such a mystery, that. ?
jl
Thanks for anecdotes. My impression from history and news items I’ve read is that Crick was a great scientist who continued to earn his keep as one, was broad and open minded his whole life, and more honest and straightforward about the contributions others made. And maybe others were not so much, and were incorrigible bigots on top of that.
WaterGirl
@ThresherK: Yeah, I had gone to Artnet.com before I asked. I hadn’t thought to go to the Art World heading, but even if I do that, I do not see the Gerbil story.
I can get to it from your link, but I’m trying to find my way around the site because it looks interesting. But I still don’t find that story except from a direct link.
HinTN
@rikyrah: Ernie Pyle
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: oh my gosh, Peanut cannot possibly be 12!
jl
@Cermet: From, I’ve read, I think that is the dark spot for both Crick and Watson. They certainly put all the pieces together like others hadn’t, but only because others had done essential, and very sound, preliminary work, and should have been credited for that work.
randy khan
The whole DNA-RNA-(ribosome)-protein dance was probably the most fascinating thing about studying biochemistry when I was in college, although – and relatedly – I also loved genetics. I am not remotely a biochemist now, but it’s stuck with me, and it’s a reminder of how cool science can be.
Kent
@rikyrah: Thousand Mile War. About the war in Alaska.
https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Mile-War-Aleutians-Classic-Reprint/dp/0912006838/
Tom Levenson
@Cheryl Rofer: Awesome.
Mary G
“The Double Helix” was the very first book I was assigned to read when I started college in 1972. We started discussing it in class and I blurted out something to the effect that Watson seemed like a real a-hole. I had horrified myself and was contemplating being expelled and sent home in disgrace, when the professor, a woman who turned out to be a radical feminist, said I was the “only one to get the point” and went on a diatribe about Franklin being erased from history.
Tom Levenson
@Mary G: Good for you and for your teacher.
Watson never outgrew being the bad boy/smartest in the room. He’s one of many genuinely accomplished people who believe a) their idiocies are loveable and b) they know stuff well beyond their competence because they’re stars. The racism and sexism were excused for a long time as Jim being Jim, until, at last (and way too late) they weren’t.
raven
@Kent: My old outfit, the 7th Infantry Division, did a good part of the fighting in that campaign.
Brachiator
@Elizabelle:
On the British comedy program “QI,” a comedian referred to the Munch recreation as “The Squeak.”
Spanky
@rikyrah: Wait. Twelve? That’s impossible.
Leto
Tom: when Avalune and I were traipsing around the UK, we spent a day in Cambridge and stumbled upon the pub where Watson and Crick first announced their discovery. The pub has a huge metal plaque outside the entrance detailing the event. We stopped in, had a pint, on the way out took a pic of the plaque, and kept on exploring. Also we found your book, about Saturn, at the local Waterstones when it first came out. I was like, “Hey, it’s Tom!” :)
WhatsMyNym
Well, my parents liked Crick when them met him socially. My dad was only at Cavendish a few years, and didn’t work with Crick.
A Ghost to Most
Since one of the catchphrases of my life has been “Fighting genetics!”, I’ll add a WOOT! For DNA Day.
NotMax
@rikyrah
Maybe, to start, a collection of Bill Mauldin’s Willie & Joe cartoons. There was a complete collection put out a decade or so ago by Fantagraphics Press which should still be in print. Good chance for discussion between the two of you of what each one is communicating beyond the caption rather than something to be devoured cover to cover in one go.
Also too, 12 is not too young for The Diary of Anne Frank.
As for the war in the Pacific, I’m coming up blank at the moment.
Tazj
@rikyrah: Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and Making Bombs for Hitler were two books that my kids read and seemed to enjoy. They are historical novels. She might have already read Number the Stars as it is required reading for many children in school.
Brachiator
@Cermet:
There is some question as to whether Franklin recognized the significance of the X-rays. Still, her contribution was tremendous and deserves to be celebrated.
I was always fascinated by DNA and the impact of its discovery on biology, and also how it further cemented the validity of the theory of evolution.
And learning more about Franklin also lead me to learn more about the contributions of other great women of science. It wasn’t just Marie Curie (and her family) alone on a pedestal.
NotMax
On topic, terrible jape which went around at the time was “Bill & Ted have stoned-washed genes.”
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Wait, Peanut is twelve?? When the hell did that happen?
(Or, what WaterGirl said @42.)
(And Spanky @51.)
Kent
@raven: Completely forgotten campaign and totally down the memory hole if you don’t live in Alaska. In an earlier part of my life I spent a couple of years working as a fisheries observer out of Dutch Harbor and the Aleutians and got as far as Adak on longline boats. The Aleutians are still riddled with the remains of WW2 detritus. Bunkers and Quonset huts all over the place, the remains of gun emplacements. And still standing ghost town Aleut villages that were forceably evacuated by the Navy at the start of the war and remain empty. Another war crime that went down the memory hole unlike the Japanese internment which everyone knows about.
If you look at a map, the reason the Alaskan Highway goes so far east through Canada was partly to stay out of the range of potential Japanese bombers. There is a more direct route through BC along the coast (the Cassiar Highway) that is shorter.
RSA
@John H. McDonald: What a great story. Thanks for sharing it.
Rand Careaga
@rikyrah: In 1950, Time-Life published a large format Life’s Picture History of World War II, very triumphalist, and saturated with Luce’s “American Century” sensibilities, but chockfull of photographs, and with essays by John Dos Passos introducing each chapter. No longer in print, of course, but used copies in good condition are on offer for under $10 by various booksellers, using a well-known online retailer as their front-end. It will almost certainly answer most of Peanut’s questions.
satby
@John H. McDonald: that’s a great story!
RSA
@NotMax:
Excellent suggestion. I have a copy of his book Up Front on my shelf, and I remember passages from it vividly. He suggests that an ordinary civilian can learn something about what it was like to be a dogface, starting off, “Fill a suitcase full of rocks…”
Ohio Mom
John H. McDonald @14: That’s a cute story. Do you still do science, and if so, what are you working on?
Anyway, welcome out of lurkdom!
Cermet
@Brachiator: Yes, I believe she hadn’t realized that fact and Wilson (et.al)* did. Not saying they aren’t due credit for that discovery. What I find incredible is that they used her data (via a third party that they were fully aware wasn’t that person’s to give) and never credited her but this fact is generally ignored. That was extremely dishonest by them both and is generally considered acedemic fraud. But she was female so, it was acceptable then.
Mike in NC
@rikyrah: Check out the Dorling-Kindersley (DK Books) catalog. They do great illustrated encyclopedias for kids on almost any subject you can think of.
Brachiator
@John H. McDonald:
Cool story. Thanks much for sharing it with us.
satby
@rikyrah: two young adult books: The Boy In The Striped Pajamas and The Girl In The Blue Coat.
Both say they’re grade 9, but at 12 I was reading adult books so you may want to read reviews about them. And of course the Diary of Anne Frank. I remembered reading a book on the Warsaw ghetto about that age, but I can’t remember the name, but while looking I found this list of age appropriate books that may help you:
https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=Commemorate-Holocaust-Remembrance-Day-with-this-Booklist-libraries-students
Robert Sneddon
@Cermet: Crick and Watson were on the trail of a helical structure for DNA but their initial lines of inquiry were that it was a triple helix. They had access to other X-ray crystallography images, the new scientific miracle tool of the period but they weren’t as good as the ones Dr. Franklin was keeping secret. Science isn’t about keeping secrets though. Publish or perish, and publish first if you want the kudos.
Jackie
@NotMax: I second (or third) on reading the Diary of Anne Frank. I think I read it the first time at 11.
satby
@John H. McDonald: I also got a little flutter at your name because John D MacDonald was one of my very favorite authors.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: @Jackie: @NotMax:
Nodding in agreement on The Diary of Ann Frank.
John H. McDonald
@Ohio Mom: Yes, after completing my post-doc at Chicago I was a professor at Delaware, doing evolutionary genetics and writing a free, online biostatistics textbook. I retired last year but set up a lab in my garage and continue to do research.
JPL
I know that Tom stopped reviewing Megan McArdle for mental health reasons, but wouldn’t it lift our spirits if just one more time he reviewed her theories about noise and the virus.
Spanky
@JPL: If I never hear another thing about Megan McWhatsername I’ll be perfectly happy.
frosty
@rikyrah: One of the ones about British POWs escaping. I read The Wooden Horse and The Great Escape at that age. Also one about Colditz. Douglas Bader’s biography (RAF pilot, double amputee, ended up in Colditz) Reach for the Sky was good. All of these are from the 50s (I was 12 a long time ago) but they still hold up.
frosty
@NotMax: I second the recommendation for Mauldin. For the Pacific, With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge. Could be a bit intense though.
John H. McDonald
@satby: In addition to John D. MacDonald, the author, there’s another, slightly older evolutionary geneticist named John McDonald who’s not related to me. There were at least three times in my career when it eventually became clear that I’d been invited to do semi-prestigious things because people thought I was some superhuman combination of myself and the other John McDonald. I met him once; he wasn’t amused.
satby
@John H. McDonald: Poor you ?.
TEL
@actual historian: Thank you! I fell into the rabbit hole and did quite a bit of reading on Rosalind Franklin. One thing I learned was a large part of why she wasn’t completely written out of science history was due to the fierce respect her colleagues had for her and her work. If she’d lived longer, there’s a fair chance she would have received a Nobel for her Tobacco Mosaic Virus work alone. My understanding of why her X-ray work on DNA was so important was because (1) it provided direct evidence of DNA structure; and (2) there were key aspects of DNA structure that Watson and Crick had wrong (namely the relative placement of the sugar and the phosphate molecules in the structure, I think? This is not an area of expertise for me, so I may have this wrong!).
SteverinoCT
@satby:
I too remember reading a YA novel of children in the ghetto. I also can’t think of its name nor any reasonable search criteria. But it would be perfect, by God! Wonder if we’re thinking of the same one.
I also read books that were my uncle’s, from his youth during the war. A red-blooded American pilot, fighting his way through a swarm of Nazis with his pals. Unless he was fighting his way through a swarm of Japanese— excuse me, “buck-toothed nearsighted sons of Nippon”— they tended to be a bit propagandist, even to me, a kid . Might be worth something now, but they were abused by two generations and printed on crappy paper
rikyrah
I know that this is a dead thread, but I took down all the book suggestions.
Thanks ?