Table Of ContentBen Franklin Stilled the Waves
Charles Tanford is James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of
Physiology at Duke University. He is the author of Physical
Chemistry of Macromolecules, The Hydrophobic Effect: Forma-
tion of Micelles and Biological Membranes, and coauthor
with Jacqueline Reynolds of Nature’s Robots: A History of
Proteins, which have become classic works in their field.
He is the author of more than 200 research contribu-
tions, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences,
and in 1979–80 was president of the Biophysical Society.
Professor Tanford now lives and writes in England.
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Ben Franklin
Stilled the Waves
1
3
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First published in hardback by Duke University Press 1989
Published in paperback by Oxford University Press 2004
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Foreword
My curiosity was piqued fourteen years ago when I saw Charles
Tanford’s Ben Franklin Stilled the Waves on a shelf of new books. I
had known Tanford as a distinguished biophysicist and physical
chemist and had learned much from his earlier scientific works.
What did Tanford have in mind in writing about Franklin and the
pouring of oil on water? The unconventional title prompted me to
read the book, which proved to be enlightening and delightful. A
few months ago, I was gratified to learn that a paperback edition
was planned and was pleased to be invited to comment on a book I
highly value.
The cells of living organisms are bounded by a fluid membrane
that gives them their individuality by separating them from their
environment. The core of all biological membranes is a closed
sheet just two molecules thick, called a lipid bilayer, which serves as
a barrier to the flow of matter between the inside and outside.
Proteins embedded in the lipid bilayer mediate distinctive functions
by serving as pumps, channels, receptors, and energy convertors.
How was the lipid bilayer, a fundamental motif of life, discovered?
Tanford provides a charming, informative, and highly accessible
account in which Ben Franklin occupies center stage.
Tanford begins with Franklin’s letter of 1773 to a scientific friend
in which he mentions Pliny’s first-century description of the
practice of seamen of his time to still the waves in a storm by
pouring oil into the sea. Franklin then tells of his own wave-stilling
experiences before describing an experiment he performed at an
English country pond, in which he observed a “sudden, wide, and
forcible spreading of a drop of oil on the face of the water”. Tanford
is a superb guide and storyteller in leading us from Franklin’s
remarkably simple and trenchant experiment to the establishment
two centuries later of the lipid bilayer nature of membranes.
F
In following the trail, we are rewarded with vignettes of scientists
who made key discoveries and vivid descriptions of the scientific
and social context of different eras. I especially enjoyed the sketches
of Lord Rayleigh and Irving Langmuir, which highlight their
incisive and enduring contributions to our understanding of sur-
faces and contrast their very different scientific and personal tem-
peraments. The account of Agnes Pockels’ key experiment, carried
out in her kitchen, and of her correspondence with Lord Rayleigh,
is sensitive and moving. Tanford also enriches and informs by high-
lighting connections made and connections missed between differ-
entfields of science.
Reading Ben Franklin Stilled the Waves a second time was much
like savoring wine that has become richer and deeper with the
passage of time.
LUBERT STRYER
Stanford University
February 2003
vi
Preface to the Paperback Edition
This book was originally written about fifteen years ago, some time
after it had been established that a phospholipid bilayer is the dom-
inant structural component of a cell membrane and that mem-
brane proteins represent a special category, preferentially associated
with such a bilayer and usually not soluble in water or simple aque-
ous solutions. Moreover, it had become clear that the ultimate
molecular basis for all this, both the propensity of phospholipids to
exist in the bilayer form and the vicinal preference of membrane
proteins, must be the hydrophobic/hydrophilic dichotomy––
molecular orientation arising from the demanding physical forces
between water molecules and their neighbours in the biological
milieu. The very existence of the living cell and the segregation and
partitioning of its contents can basically be viewed as dictated by
this factor, providing a physico-chemical link between the living cell
and the many phenomena of the inanimate world, in which the
hydrophobic force plays a similar determining role, without, of
course, any lipid or protein being involved.
Who would have guessed that there might be a parallel between
one of the most basic features of “life” and such a simple phenom-
enon as the spreading of oil on water and the stilling of the waves
that results from it? What is the history of research and comprehen-
sion into this and closely related questions? In tracing the answer,
we find that a fascinating assembly of people have, each in their
own way, independently taken the lead along a similar trail: Nobel
laureates Irving Langmuir and Lord Rayleigh, the amateur Agnes
Pockels, who worked in her kitchen, the Dutch pediatrician Evert
Gorter, and (perhaps most fascinating of all) the American states-
man and polymath Benjamin Franklin. Physics, chemistry and biol-
ogy have all been enriched by their work.
This paperback reissue is essentially identical with the original
P P E
1989 edition published by Duke University Press. A few small cor-
rections have been made to eliminate some errors that were in the
original; in other respects the text remains unaltered. Two new
items have been added to the wide-ranging bibliography––because
they should have been there all along––but no attempt has been
made to bring the list up-to-date by including more recent work.
C. T.
Easingwold
February 2003
viii
Acknowledgments
My vague idea of some years ago, to write “something” about Ben
Franklin’s experiment and its relevance for biology, would never
have come to fruition without the constant urging and encourage-
ment of Jacqueline Reynolds. She also contributed to the necessary
research and to the endless quest for little errors of fact in the text. I
am deeply grateful to her. I also thank Ben Reynolds for his invalu-
able advice, especially on style; Seymour Mauskopf for setting me
straight on central themes in the history of chemistry; J. J. Hermans
for his recollections of Evert Gorter; John Edsall for his recollec-
tions of Lawrence Henderson; George Gaines and the General
Electric Company for the photograph of Irving Langmuir; and the
Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden and Drs. J. G. Leroy and J. Kint of the
Rijksuniversiteit Gent for different versions of the photograph of
Evert Gorter.
I am grateful to Cambridge University Press for permission to
reproduce a portion of Clarence Greig’s delightful translation
of Pliny the Younger’s letter about his uncle’s death at Pompeii.
I thank Oxford University Press for permission to reproduce
figure 22.
