Unravelling the Double Helix
The Lost Heroes of DNA
-
- 3,99 €
-
- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
Unravelling the Double Helix covers the most colourful period in the history of DNA, from the discovery of 'nuclein' in the late 1860s to the landmark publication of James Watson's The Double Helix in 1968. These hundred years included the advent of the Nobel Prize, antibiotics, X-ray crystallography and the atom bomb as well as two devastating world wars - events which are strung along the narrative thread of DNA like beads on a necklace.
The story of DNA is a saga packed with awful mistakes as well as brilliant science, with a wonderful cast of heroes and villains. Surprisingly, much of it is unfamiliar. The elucidation of the double helix was one of the most brilliant gems of twentieth-century science, but some of the scientists who played crucial roles have been airbrushed out of history. Others were plunged into darkness when the spotlight fell on James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin. Watson and Crick solved a magnificent mystery, but Gareth Williams shows that their contribution was to click into place the last few pieces of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle assembled over several decades.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With this history of how DNA's role in cellular reproduction and inheritance was uncovered, Williams, emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Bristol, capably conveys the process of how scientific discoveries are made in general, including the false trails, dead ends, and recalcitrant colleagues along the way. He begins his story in 1868, relating how German physician Friedrich Miescher discovered "nuclein," later renamed DNA, and shows the halting steps scientists took before conclusively determining in 1944 that the substance was central to the transmission of inherited characteristics. He also demonstrates how some, like American biochemist Alfred Mirsky, fought the idea that a molecule as simple as DNA could possibly be responsible for so complex an activity. Along the way, Williams relates how 19th-century Mendelian genetics were merged with 20th century advances in biochemistry, and concludes by recapping the race to discover the three-dimensional structure of DNA. His contention that British scientist Maurice Wilkins, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for the discovery with James Watson and Francis Crick, treated his colleague Rosalind Franklin far more fairly than is usually portrayed, will be received with interest, if not necessarily agreement, by genetics buffs. For them, and popular science readers in general, this is a history well worth perusing.
