Unravelling the Double Helix
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I couldn’t have written this book without a lot of help. Heading the thank-you list is, of course, my long-suffering wife, Caroline. This is not just to avoid trouble at home. As always, Caroline has fed in encouragement and sound judgement throughout the last couple of years, and her new habit of reading draft chapters in the bath has provided a handy Dampness Index to indicate which sections need urgent rewriting. The fact that both our children – Tim and Jo – left home at around the time I started this book is, I believe, just a coincidence; since then, their weary chorus of ‘Aren’t you nearly there yet?’ has helped to egg me on, while reawakening fond memories of car journeys of yesteryear.
As with previous books, I’m indebted to several experts with inside knowledge who have been happy to share their recollections and impressions, and to put me right when I got things wrong. I am particularly grateful to Dr Jenifer Glynn, younger sister of Rosalind Franklin; to Professor Tony and Dr Margaret North (née Pratt), for glimpses into the inner workings of ‘Randall’s Circus’ at King’s and the Royal Institution; to Professor Freddie Gutfreund FRS, for capturing the essence of Cambridge in the run-up to the double helix; and to Dr Kersten Hall, author of the excellent The Man in the Monkeynut Coat, for insights into the character of Bill Astbury.
Invaluable clarification of points of detail came from Professor Hermann Fiiessl, Munich (the obituary of Fred Neufeld); Professor Ondrej Dostál, Mendel Museum, Brno (Mendel and his statue); Dr Arianne Dröscher, University of Bologna (Walther Flemming’s life); Professor Steve Harding, Biochemistry Department, Nottingham University (Michael Creeth’s contributions); and Professor Sonia Jackson, Thornbury (parties chez the Cricks). For hunting down elusive references and images, my thanks also go to Jonna Petterson, Public Relations Officer at the Nobel Foundation; Andrea Sharpe at the International Union of Crystallography; Rupert Baker (Library Manager) and Rebecca Hart (Archive Cataloguer) at the Royal Society; David Allen, Librarian, Royal Society of Chemistry; Annette Faux, MRC Molecular Biology Laboratory, Cambridge; Andrea Deneau, Linnean Society, London; Bethany Antos, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York; Douglas Atkins, History of Medicine Division, US National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland.
As with the last three books, I’m indebted to Ray Loadman for bringing his habitual elegance and artistry to the line drawings. In the past, he has worked wonders with everything from the Indian Goddess of Smallpox to an implausible amphibian postulated to live in a deep Scottish loch; here, he has turned his hand faultlessly to X-ray diffraction and Mendel’s peas. Permission to reproduce the lines from John Masefield’s Sonnet XII was kindly granted by the Society of Authors, Literary Representative of the Estate of John Masefield.
In recent years, the task of finding source material has been revolutionised by the invisible and unfathomable robots of Google; luckily, real humans remain in charge of old-fashioned archives where you can read Maurice Wilkins’s notes to himself and hold the original Photograph 51 (protected in its cellophane jacket) between your fingers. For their expertise, guidance and patience, I’d especially like to thank Heidi Eggington, Sophie Bridges, Natasha Swainston and Julia Schmidt, of the Churchill College Archives, Cambridge; Salvatore Bellavia, Diane Manipud and Jessica Borge at the King’s College Archives, London; and Alexandra Anderson at the Special Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. Visits to the archives were covered by a generous Myre Sim Fund travel grant from the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, for which I am especially grateful.
Next, the many friends who have seen me safely through the writing process – which, appropriately enough for a chap of my vintage, has had its prostatic moments of hesitancy, poor flow and intermittent obstruction. Dr Bob Spencer and Mr John Rainey FRCS have been brilliant throughout, instantly batting back draft chapters with helpful and incisive comments. Both showed extreme devotion to duty: Bob, by continuing to email feedback while under curfew in Gaza, and John while recovering from an assault by fellow surgeons. I’m also extremely grateful to Rob Bartlett, Tracy Spencer, Paul Beck, Jenifer Roberts, Ernest Woolford, Ray and Jeanne Loadman, Moira Fozard, Dr Katie Hall, Dr John Lee and Dr Joel Harrison, for all their input and improvements; to Geoff Mulligan, Tim and Julie Mann, Colin Gardener, Alison Paton, Tim Jones and David Miller for vital encouragement at strategic moments; and to Felicity Mann for bashing my haphazard bibliography into respectable shape.
My special thanks go to Dr Kathryn Atkins, whose thoughts and wisdom I greatly valued while writing the previous two books. Sadly, like the fabulously idiosyncratic Durdham Down Bookshop which she ran in Bristol, Kathryn is no longer with us. I’m afraid that I was too slow for her to see any of this book, but I like to think that she would have given it her thumbs-up.
And finally, to the people who really made this book happen – because it is all wasted effort until the glorious moment when you finally hold the finished product in your hand. This is the first time that I’ve had an agent and, looking back, I’m not sure how I muddled through before. Julian Alexander has ticked all the boxes for the ideal agent: wise, witty, dogged, tolerant, unflappable and great fun. To him, and to his excellent assistant Ben Clark, my heartfelt thanks.
Which just leaves my publisher. I counted myself extremely fortunate to have entrusted the Loch Ness Monster to Alan Samson at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and was delighted when he expressed interest in this book. As before, Alan and his brilliant team have been consummate professionals and a huge pleasure to work with. In the front line have been the hawk-eyed and immensely patient Simon Wright (editor), Anne O’Brien (copy-editor), Debbie Holmes (art director), Elizabeth Allen (publicity), and Hannah Cox (production controller). It gives me a particular thrill to see this book on my shelf beside the copy of Watson’s The Double Helix which I took to Cambridge in the autumn of 1971 – because that too was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, fifty years and a few days before I finished writing mine.
I doubt that this one will match the sales of The Double Helix, but as the song goes, ‘I can dream, can’t I?’ And I hope you enjoyed it.
Rockhampton, Gloucestershire
January 2019
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Figure 1.1 The DNA molecule, pictured as a spiral staircase (Ray Loadman)
Figure 2.1 Friedrich Miescher (University of Basel/Jakob Höflinger)
Figure 3.1 Nuclei in cells of the milkweed, drawn by Robert Brown (The Linnean Society)
Figure 3.2 Chromosomes during cell division, drawn by Walther Flemming (Zellsubstanz, 1882)
Figure 3.3 Cell division (Ray Loadman)1
Figure 4.1 Gregor Mendel and his brothers at the Abbey of St Thomas in Brünn (Prof. Ondrej Dostál, Gregor Mendel Museum, Brno)
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nbsp; Figure 4.2 Diagram of Mendel’s cross-fertilisation studies (Ray Loadman)
Figure 5.1 Thomas Hunt Morgan in the Fly Room at Columbia University, New York (California Institute of Technology Archives)
Figure 6.1 Albrecht Kossel (University Archives Heidelberg)
Figure 6.2 Purine and pyrimidine bases in DNA and RNA (Ray Loadman)
Figure 7.1 Phoebus Levene (Rockefeller University Archives)
Figure 7.2 A ‘tetranucleotide’ structure for DNA, proposed by Levene (Ray Loadman)
Figure 8.1 X-ray crystallography, apparatus and theoretical basis (Ray Loadman)
Figure 8.2 William Bragg and his son Lawrence (Smithsonian Institution Archives)
Figure 9.1 Mutations in the fruit fly, Drosophila, described by T.H. Morgan’s group (Royal Society)
Figure 9.2 Ribose and deoxyribose, the sugars in RNA and DNA (Ray Loadman)
Figure 10.1 William (Bill) Astbury (Special Collections, Leeds University Library)
Figure 11.1 Fred Griffith (Science Photo Library)
Figure 11.2 Griffith’s experiments on the transformation of pneumococci (Ray Loadman)
Figure 12.1 Oswald Avery (Rockefeller University Archives)
Figure 13.1 The ‘pile of pennies’ structure proposed for DNA by Bill Astbury (Ray Loadman)
Figure 14.1 Nikolai Vavilov, Russian geneticist and botanist (Science Photo Library)
Figure 15.1 John Randall (Royal Society/Godfrey Argent)
Figure 15.2 Maurice Wilkins (Archive Bocher/Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings)
Figure 17.1 Prisoner No. 7002: Nikolai Vavilov (N. I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry)
Figure 18.1 Alfred Mirsky and Gulland Masson (Cold Spring Harbor Archives)
Figure 18.2 Erwin Chargaff (Science Photo Library)
Figure 18.3 Chargaff’s Rules (Ray Loadman)
Figure 19.1 Linus Pauling (California Institute of Technology Archives)
Figure 19.2 Molecular structures for DNA proposed by Michael Creeth and Sven Furberg (University of London/Sven Furberg Estate)