The Path to the Double Helix: The Discovery of DNA

713 Pages·2012·6.68 MB·English

by  Robert Olby

I Frontispiece. Pasadena Conference on the Structure of Proteins 21 to 25 September 1953.
THE PATH TO THE
DOUBLE HELIX
The Discovery of DNA
ROBERT OLBY
Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science
The University of Pittsburgh
FOREWORD BY
FRANCIS CRICK
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
MINEOLA, NEW YORK
Foreword
It is a pleasure to write a foreword to The Path to the Double Helix. As the
reader will easily discover for himself it contains a fascinating series of related
scientific histories told in a lively, perceptive and scholarly way. In spite of my
overfamiliarity with parts of the story I have found it absorbing reading.
It is inevitable that comparisons will be made between this book and Jim
Watson’s earlier volume, The Double Helix, in spite of their obvious differences.
Watson’s book was really a fragment of his autobiography. Not only did he
attempt to describe the discovery of the DNA through the eyes of the young man
he was at that time but he included many lively personal details not strictly
essential to his main theme. His Chapter 15, for example, relating how he lay on
the floor at Carradale (the book was dedicated to Naomi Mitchison) and
attempted to grow a beard tells us little of purely scientific interest. But then
Watson’s principal aim was to show that scientists were human, a fact only too
well known to scientists themselves but apparently not, at that time, to the
general public. Hence the book’s enormous success. Even if the science could
only be glimpsed it sounded exciting and the gossip was irresistible.
To achieve his aim Watson could not avoid simplifying the scientific side of
the story. Indeed it is surprising how many technical arguments he managed to
slip in without making his text too heavy. It is also clear, as Medawar has
pointed out, that Watson is not really interested in history as such. His interest
lies in the future—in what will soon be discovered—but time, in this case, has
turned his future into his past and like the Ancient Mariner he could not rest till
he had relived his story by communicating it.
Robert Olby has set himself quite different aims. As a historian of science he
is interested in both the science and the history. This is not to say that he is in
any way indifferent to personality. Who can resist the story of the ultrashy Fred
Griffith being tricked into a taxi by his friends in order to get him to attend a
meeting, or the picture of Darlington, during a rough night in mid-channel,
teaching Bernal “all the genetics and cytology anyone needs to know”. The
character of Maurice Wilkins, in particular, seems to me to come over more
vividly in Olby’s book than in Watson’s, partly due to Wilkins’ letters which
Olby has often quoted in toto. This is no accident. It springs from Olby’s care
and industry in collecting original documents and taping interviews, together
with a good eye for a striking incident or a telling phrase.
The major difference between the two books, which is clearly reflected in the
greater length of the present volume, is that Olby treats the science more
thoroughly and at a higher intellectual level; in addition, he traces both the ideas
and the methods back to earlier periods. I am not always clear why he has
followed some historical lines further back than others. His choice is often rather
personal but in each case the story he presents is full of interest. Together, these
earlier studies set the stage for the attempt on the structure itself.
As a professional historian, Olby has been at pains to check and cross-check
meticulously the details of the historical record. This by itself is no more than
careful scholarship—it corresponds more to getting coordinates than to solving
the structure—but Olby’s professionalism has more depth than this. He develops
the story from many points of view and he asks questions. Watson is perhaps
inclined to regard an incorrect conclusion as a pure act of folly. Olby is more
concerned to track down the roots of the mistake.
Sometimes the results of his investigations will come as a complete surprise
even to those who were actively working in the field. Who would have suspected
that Beighton, in Astbury’s laboratory, had obtained very good X-ray photos of
the B form of DNA in 1951 and had not thought it worthwhile to publish them.
At other times the facts were well known, at least in outline, but Olby has shed
new light on them. In every case his reconstruction has been both imaginative
and thoughtful. One follows with fascination the many aspects of the story of
how the idea that genes were made mainly of protein was gradually replaced by
our present ideas.
This, then, is the first full scholarly account of how the structure of DNA was
discovered, set against its proper historical background. This does not mean it
will be the last. The story—and what a good story it is—has too many
ramifications for that. Some topics which Olby has touched on could well
receive a longer treatment. If Watson had never come to Cambridge, who would
have discovered the structure ? More important, how long would it have taken ?
After all, the structure was there waiting to be discovered—Watson and I did not
invent it. It seems to me unlikely that either of us would have done it separately,
but Rosalind Franklin was getting pretty close. She was in fact only two steps
away. She needed to realize that the two chains were anti-parallel and to
discover the base-pairing. Wilkins, after Franklin left, could well have got there
in his own good time. Whether Pauling would have made a second attempt (as
we then feared) I am less certain. Olby demonstrates what was not clear to us at
the time, that in the absence of our structure Pauling was not inclined to accept
the more obvious criticisms of his own. Or, as Olby speculates, would the
biochemists have hit on it in the end ? And, if so, what difference would it have
made ?
Then there is the question of the motivation of the principal scientists
involved, which often seems to contrast somewhat with the ostensible motives of
the people providing them with money. Although Olby gives us much of the raw
data on this topic it might deserve a more extended discussion. But that is the
nature of history. What is I think certain is that no future historian of science in
this area will be able to ignore the present volume, both for the thoroughness of
Olby’s investigation and for the good judgment he brings to the task.
FRANCIS CRICK
Preface
I cannot recall the word DNA ever being mentioned when I was a student at
London University in the early fifties. How times have changed! Now this
abbreviation for desoxyribonucleic acid is known far beyond the confines of
university walls. J. D. Watson has provided us with an absorbing account of the
discovery of its structure and others have added to the growing literature on the
history of nucleic acid researches; but we still lack a broadly based study which
will offer an overview of the whole intellectual and institutional movement in
experimental biology which has yielded a physical and chemical account of the
gene.
Here I attempt to contribute to filling this gap and, in so doing, to offer the
scientist, sociologist and historian a reference work divided into five sections,
any one of which may prove useful on its own. The reader who finds the sections
dealing with X-ray crystallography difficult may profit more from those given to
the chemistry and biology of the gene, and vice versa. The sociologist of science
may wish to confine his attention to those chapters dealing with the development
of research schools. The events leading to the discovery of the Watson-Crick
model have been described in chapters 19 to 21 in some detail, supported by
many quotations from original source material. This presentation was deliberate
in view of the considerable publicity which this phase of the work has been
accorded. The final chapter surveys the state of molecular biology from the
vantage point of 1973. This may reveal the limitations of one who is caught in
the paradigm of the molecular biology of the ‘sixties. I hope it does not. It
should convey my recognition of the limited extent of present-day knowledge,
and of the possibility of further unexpected, even revolutionary, developments.
At the same time I have not felt it necessary to comment on such discoveries as
peptide synthesis without nucleic acids (Laland and Zimmer, 1973).
It has not been my aim to trace all historical antecedents to discoveries. Thus
I have not referred to Araki’s work of 1903 on what later became recognized as
DNase, or to the extraction of DNA in small quantities from yeast by Dellaporte
in 1939, or the extraction of nucleic acid from the tubercle bacillus by Ruppel in
1898–9. Nor have I dealt adequately with several important aspects and
contributors to the subject matter of the book. My assessment of H. J. Muller’s
contribution to molecular biology is brief and critical. For a more appreciative
and detailed study the reader is referred to the forthcoming biography of Muller
by Carlson which the University of Indiana Press will publish. My account of the
cytochemistry of nucleic acids does not include the work of the Belgian scientist,
Jean Brachet. This omission resulted from my decision to exclude studies in the
field of chemical embryology. For a fuller account of the history of nucleic acid
chemistry the reader is referred to the forthcoming book by Cohen and Portugal
to be published by M.I.T. Press. The wide-ranging studies of Fruton and of
Florkin are also available for those who wish to learn about the history of
biochemistry.
This book would not have been possible without the very substantial help
which so many scientists have given me. I am greatly indebted to all of them,
and particularly to Francis Crick for his unfailing enthusiasm, constructive
criticism, and willingness to explain what I failed to understand. Many insights
in the book have originated either directly from him or from discussions with
him by letter, telephone or in person. I owe a similar debt to Linus Pauling and
Maurice Wilkins. In the writing of some of the earlier chapters I have received
much encouragement and help from Cyril Darlington and Sir Hans Krebs. For
advice on recent developments in molecular biology I am indebted to Simon
Baumberg, Tony North and Peter Speakman, all of Leeds University.
The later chapters contain many quotations from recorded interviews. Some
of these are somewhat colloquial in style. The reader is asked to make due
allowance both for this and for the direct, informal style of the extracts from
personal correspondence. It is a pleasure to express my thanks to those
concerned for the time they gave me and for permission to publish these extracts,
also to those who gave me background material not referred to in the text. They
are:
United Kingdom:
G. S. Adair, V. W. Allison, E. S. Anderson, W. F. Astbury, G. R. Barker, E.
Beighton, Mrs. E. Bernal, Lady W. L. Bragg, G. L. Brown, A. J. Caraffi, C. H.
Carlisle, W. Cochran, C. Coulson, F. H. C. Crick, Mrs. O. Crick, C. D.
Darlington, M. Davies, Mrs. A. Dickens, S. D. Elliott, R. G. Gosling, J. S.
Griffith, F. Happey, Sir H. Himsworth, D. Hodgkin, Sir R. D. Keynes, A. Klug,
I. Mac Arthur, R. Markham, J. Needham, P. Pauling, M. Perutz, M. Polanyi, M.
R. Pollock, E. Posner, C. Preston, R. D. Preston, Sir J. T. Randall, K. M. Rudall,
Mrs. A. Sanderson, W. E. Seeds, P. T. Speakman, A. R. Stokes, Sir A. Todd, C.
H. Waddington, M. H. F. Wilkins, H. J. Woods.
United States of America
G. Brawerman, E. A. Carlson, S. S. Cohen, J. F. Danielli, M. Delbrück, T.
Dobzhansky, J. Donohue, R. Dubos, H. Fraenkel-Conrat, Mrs. D. Fankuchen, F.
Haurowitz, A. D. Hershey, R. D. Hotchkiss, M. L. Huggins, J. Lederberg, Mrs.
G. Lewis, S. Luria, A. Lwoff, M. McCarty, G. M. MacLeod family, H. Mark, E.
Mayr, A. E. Mirsky, Mrs. H. J. Muller, G. Oster, L. Pauling, F. Payne, B. Post,
A. W. Ravin, Mrs. F. O. Sawyer, V. Schomaker, J. Schultz family, R.
Sinsheimer, T. M. Sonneborn, Mrs. N. Sonneborn, G. S. Stent, D. D. Van Slyke
family, P. A. Weiss, S. Wright, G. R. Wyatt, S. Zamenhof.
European Countries [other than the U.K.]
T. Caspersson, B. Ephrussi, A. F. Frey-Wyssling, S. Furberg, A. Lwoff, O.
Maaløe, G. Melchers, R. Signer, M. Staudinger, R. Vendrely, E. Vischer, D. von
Wettstein.
I also thank F. H. C. Crick, S. Furberg and R. G. Gosling for loaning me their
Ph.D. theses.
This work has benefited from the use of archive collections. It is a pleasure
to thank the staff concerned, especially W. Bell and J. Goodstein. The fourteen
archives used are in the following institutions: American Institute of Physics,
American Philosophical Society, Bancroft Library of the University of
California at Berkeley, Biophysics Department of Leeds University, California
Institute of Technology, Columbia Oral History Office, Darlington
Correspondence in the Botany School Oxford, Leeds University Archive, Lilly
Library of Indiana University at Bloomington, Medical Research Council,
Needham Correspondence at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, the
National Foundation, Rockefeller University and Rockefeller Foundation.
I acknowledge grants for travel and research from the universities of Leeds
and Oxford, the American Philosophical Society, Royal Society and Wellcome
Trust. I thank the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for inviting me to
conferences at Bellagio and Boston, and the Committee of the International
Congress of Genetics for their invitation to Berkeley.
Small sections of the book have already appeared in an abbreviated form in
Daedalus, Journal of Chemical Education, Journal of the History of Biology and
Nature. I thank the editors for permission to expand these papers here.
Several of my friends have read large sections of this book. I am grateful to
all of them, and especially to Peter Speakman for the great care and attention he
has given to this task.
May 1974