{"product_id":"genes-girls-and-gamow-isbn-9780375727153","title":"Genes, Girls, and Gamow","description":"In the years following his and Francis Crick’s towering discovery of DNA, James Watson was obsessed with finding two things: RNA and a wife. \u003cb\u003eGenes, Girls, and Gamow\u003c\/b\u003e is the marvelous chronicle of those pursuits. Watson effortlessly glides between his heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious debacles in the field of love and his heady inquiries in the field of science. He also reflects with touching candor on some of science’s other titans, from fellow Nobelists Linus Pauling and the incorrigible Richard Feynman to Russian physicist George Gamow, who loved whiskey, limericks, and card tricks as much as he did molecules and genes. What emerges is a refreshingly human portrait of a group of geniuses and a candid, often surprising account of how science is done.“A priceless glimpse into the intellectual circle that nurtured [Watson’s] revolutionary paradigm.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A fun-filled saga that substitutes Mercedes roadsters and molecular biology for the fear and loathing of gonzo master Hunter S. Thompson.” –\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There are scores of wonderful tidbits. . . . To his credit, Watson never spares himself.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Bring[s] to life the amazing brain trust . . . that included American chemist Linus Pauling, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman and Russian-born theoretical physicist George 'Geo' Gamow.” –\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An essential coda to \u003ci\u003eThe Double Helix\u003c\/i\u003e.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eJames D. Watson is president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, he has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, and, with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1962.Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCambridge (England): April 1953\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthough my hair was properly long and my accent toned to suggest  almost an English origin, Odile Crick told me I had still far to go  before I would look right walking along Cambridge's King's Parade,  much less looking purposefully indolent in one of its college  gardens. My appearance would not have mattered if I were the same as  a month ago-an unkempt slender figure who said what I thought as  opposed to what good manners required. But now that Francis Crick and  I had given the world the double helix, Cambridge in its own quiet  way was bound to ask what we looked like. The time had come to  acquire at least one set of clothes that would go well with Francis's  Edwardian elegance. I was not trusted to act alone and Odile  accompanied me to the men's clothing shop across from the chapel of  John's (the College). My ill-fitting American tweed jacket was thrown  out and replaced by a blue blazer and associated gray trousers. They  would much better express my new status as the co-winner of a very  great scientific jackpot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe DNA molecule we had found two months before-in March 1953-was far  more beautiful than we ever anticipated. With the two polynucleotide  chains held together by adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine base  pairs, DNA had the complementary structure needed for the gene to be  exactly copied during chromosome replication. When 1953 started,  finding out what genes look like and how they replicate were two of  the three big unsolved problems in genetics. Seemingly coming from  nowhere, Francis and I had now grasped both. At times I virtually had  to pinch myself to prove that I was not in the middle of a wonderful  dream. But I was not, and so the possibility existed of a grand slam  in which Francis and I also worked out how genes provide the  information to make proteins.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy the flip of a coin, our names in the original manuscript had the  order Watson-Crick instead of Crick-Watson. So several Cambridge wags  now could refer to our DNA model as the WC structure. They suspected  that our golden helix would be found tainted and destined for dumping  down the water-closet drain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI had become monomaniacal about DNA only in 1951 when I had just  turned 23 and as a postdoctoral fellow was temporarily in Naples  attending a small May meeting on biologically important  macromolecules. There I learned from a mid-thirtyish English  physicist called Maurice Wilkins that DNA, if properly prepared,  diffracts X-rays as if it were a highly organized crystal. The odds  were thus good that DNA molecules (genes) themselves have highly  regular structures that conceivably could be worked out over the next  several years. Briefly I considered asking Wilkins if he would let me  join his London lab at King's College on the Strand, but my attempts  to talk with him after his lecture elicited no enthusiastic response  and I dropped the idea.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInstead, through the intervention of Salvador Luria, my Ph.D.  supervisor at Indiana University, I was taken on five months later at  the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to work with an English  chemist, John Kendrew. He was helping the Austrian-born chemist Max  Perutz lead a small research group supported by the Medical Research  Council (MRC) called the \"Unit for the Study of the Molecular  Structure of Biological Systems.\" Started in 1947, its scientists  used X-ray methods to work on the three-dimensional structures of the  oxygen-carrying proteins hemoglobin and myoglobin. In going to join  the group, I hoped to expand the attention of the unit to DNA, so  that they would let me work on it, instead of a protein, once I had  learned X-ray diffraction techniques.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy crystallographic career, however, would have likely soon aborted if Francis Crick had not been in the lab. From the moment I arrived,  he treated me as if I was a much younger brother in need of help.  Then 35 years old, Francis was effectively unknown outside Cambridge,  having joined the unit only two years before. Already Francis's  penchant for theory had made him a powerful addition to the team's  protein-solving efforts. His first major success came soon after I  arrived, when that October he helped work out the theory for  diffraction from helical objects. Even so, Francis could not  anticipate a long-term future within the unit, because the week  before he had badly upset the head of the Cavendish Laboratory, Sir  Lawrence Bragg, by arguing that he, not Bragg, first saw a potential  new way of analyzing protein X-ray diffraction patterns. To say the  least, Bragg did not like the implication that he had pinched a  younger colleague's idea. In fact, on that ill-fated Saturday  morning, Francis realized that neither his nor Bragg's precise  approaches were that good and that only isomorphous replacement  methods held out real hope.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat fall of 1951 we had no reason to hope that we would be more than  minor players in DNA research. The experimentalists at King's College  London-Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin-were set to provide the  definitive evidence for choosing one DNA model over another. But over  the next year, their personalities clashed badly, and Maurice found  himself driven away from X-ray analysis of DNA. Soon Rosalind had all  the cards needed to solve the structure, provided she co-opted the  model-building approach that Francis and I so passionately argued  for. Here her greatest mistake was being put off by Francis's strong  personality that she thought masked a bumptious overextended  intellect.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEven less predictable was the inexplicable chemical botch that Linus  Pauling, then universally perceived as the world's best chemist, made  with his ill-conceived triple-stranded DNA helix. Late in 1952, we  had become apprehensive when Linus's son, Peter, who had newly  arrived in the unit to be a research student with John Kendrew, told  us that \"Pop\" was working on DNA. Only 18 months before Linus had  humiliated the Cambridge group with his a-helical fold for proteins.  We breathed much, much easier in February 1953 when we read a  manuscript from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and  saw that Pauling's DNA model was way off the mark.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eQuickly I raced into London to alert the King's group that Pauling's  new helix was a botch and we should expect him quickly to devise a  better model. Rosalind, however, thought I was being unnecessarily  hysterical, telling me in no uncertain terms that DNA was not  helical. Afterwards, in the safety of his office, Maurice-bristling  with anger at having been shackled now for almost two years by  Rosalind's intransigence-let loose the, until then, closely guarded  King's secret that DNA existed in a paracrystalline (B) form as well  as a crystalline (A) form. In his mind the cross-shaped B-diffraction  pattern, shown on the X-ray he then impulsively took out of a drawer  for me to see, had to arise from helical symmetry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlmost perversely, it was Linus Pauling's entry into the DNA game  that made it possible for Francis and me to find the double helix. In  November 1951, before it was clear that Pauling was out to get the  DNA prize, Francis and I had been told by Sir Lawrence Bragg that DNA  was off limits to the Cambridge unit because it belonged to the  workers at King's. Even 14 months later, bad memories still existed  of our awkward first attempts to build DNA models. But we then  quickly gave up trying to guess the DNA structure and even passed  details of the molds needed to build models to Maurice Wilkins. By  now appraised of the B-form's existence, Bragg wanted Francis and me  to have another go at building models. He hoped that our  efforts-possibly coordinated with those in London-would generate the  right answer before Pauling recovered his senses.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo one then could have anticipated that in less than a month Francis  and I alone would have found the answer and one so perfect that the  experimental evidence in its favor from King's almost seemed an  unnecessary accompaniment to a graceful composition put together in  heaven. Our writing of the tiny manuscript for \u003ci\u003eNature\u003c\/i\u003e that would  announce the double helix seemed even then an historic occasion. My  sister Elizabeth, who had followed me to Europe two years before, did  the typing, with Odile Crick using her artistic talents to draw the  intertwined, base-paired, polynucleotide chains. Together with two  experimental manuscripts from the warring King's groups of Wilkins  and Franklin, it was dispatched to \u003ci\u003eNature\u003c\/i\u003e's editor by Bragg on April  2 and published only slightly more than three weeks later on April 25.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOur most unanticipated success was a big relief to Betty, my sister,  and Odile. My proclivity for super dreams had clearly long worried  Betty, who feared that I would never adapt successfully to the world  of ordinary people. Odile, on the other hand, no longer had to worry  about having to leave Cambridge. Bragg could not force Francis to  leave the lab after he had helped give England the double helix. And,  even though it was then ordained that the Cricks go for a year to  Brooklyn, Odile would not have to consider the awful fate of staying  on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDinners with the Cricks at their house in Portugal Place became even  more spirited occasions after our success, with Odile often bantering  me about my better prospects of getting the perfect girlfriend.  Before the double helix, it was easy to meet the foreign girls who  were in Cambridge to learn English. But I sensed it would be much  better to try and get to know the undergraduate English girls at  Girton or Newnham-at least I might understand what they said. But no  one I knew then had any real contacts at these women's colleges. The  correct tack for me might have been to seek out an attractive tennis  player. But Francis, though his father played at Wimbledon, had long  ago given up outdoor sports and neither he nor Odile knew any girl,  blond or otherwise, who hit the ball hard. Happily by the time of our  discovery, and on my own initiative, I thought I might have located  the girlfriend appropriate for my new fame.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe previous August, in the Italian Alps, I had met a good-looking  English girl called Sheila Griffiths, who was living with a  mountaineering family. As luck would have it, we started talking only  two days before I was due to depart, one of which she spent ascending  Monte Disgrázia that loomed above the tiny village of Chiarregio.  Born in Wales, Sheila was in Italy to improve her Italian in return  for looking after two children and hoped to go to Rome when the  summer ended. She came from a mining heritage and her father, Jim  Griffiths, was a Labour Member of Parliament. She had several more  weeks in the mountains and worried about keeping busy if bad weather  settled in. So I lent her my copy of Aldous Huxley's \u003ci\u003ePoint Counter  Point\u003c\/i\u003e and, when briefly in Milan, bought copies of \u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e and  \u003ci\u003eNew Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e to post on to her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring the fall I kept hoping to hear from her, having given her my  Clare College address when we parted because then she did not know  where she would be living in Rome. Just before we found the double  helix, however, she sent me a letter from the Dolomites where she was  learning to ski with her two charges. At Easter she was coming  permanently back to England and enclosed the telephone number of her  family's home in Putney. Before we parted in Italy, I had told her  that DNA had to be at the heart of life. Now, in April 1953, this was  no longer a conjecture: the double helix would soon be a, if not \u003ci\u003ethe\u003c\/i\u003e,  fact of life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCambridge (England): April-May 1953\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn London, Sheila Griffiths and I first met in Mayfair at Brown's  Hotel near the Society for Visiting Scientists in Old Burlington  Street, where, for 17 shillings and six pence, I got a bed to sleep  on and corn flakes and toast for breakfast. Immediately I told her of  our manuscript that would be appearing in \u003ci\u003eNature\u003c\/i\u003e the next week and  very likely create a big splash. Later, as we dined at the Dover  Street Buttery, we had much conversational fun, and the evening went  by far too fast. But I already knew of a date two weeks off when  Alicia Markova was to dance \u003ci\u003eGiselle\u003c\/i\u003e at Covent Garden, and I had no  difficulty persuading Sheila to join me for the occasion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSeveral days earlier I had put my sister on the boat train to  Southampton for her return to the States and to our parents, now  living amongst the Indiana sand dunes. Betty had been in Europe for  almost two years, from just before my first meeting with Maurice  Wilkins. Initially we were easily spotted as Americans, especially me  with my closely cropped hair and lumberjack shirts. But Betty had  acquired a continental flavor from her Jacques Faith suits and when I  spoke I was no longer recognized as an American. To my surprise, I  often passed as Irish, possibly reflecting the language of my Gleason  grandmother, who lived with my family when I was growing up. This  expatriate phase of our lives, however, was soon to end; she would  have to stop being called Elizabeth and be Betty again-a necessary  transition from the English to the American way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNevertheless Betty looked forward to going home more than I did. In  the late summer she would be setting off again, this time to Japan,  to marry an American whom she had known at the University of Chicago.  Likewise I was to return to the States at summer's end to take up a  postdoctoral position at the California Institute of Technology in  Pasadena. Although I loved my Cambridge life, I saw no way of  delaying my departure. For almost a year before the double helix was  found, my longtime patron, Max DelbrÃ?ck, had been counting on me to  come to Pasadena to help with the students who were working with  viruses that infect bacteria-bacteriophages, or phages, for short.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore April had ended, Crick and I had dispatched a second paper to  \u003ci\u003eNature\u003c\/i\u003e to elaborate on the phrase, \"It has not escaped our notice  that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a  possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.\" Francis  initially had wanted to be much more specific in our April 25 paper,  but I argued that we should understate our model's implication  because our paper was to be followed by ones from Rosalind Franklin's  and Maurice Wilkins's groups, the two having long gone their separate  ways. But once our manuscript had gone to \u003ci\u003eNature\u003c\/i\u003e, I, too, worried  that if we didn't state our ideas more clearly somebody else would  try to poach them and get some of the credit. Francis wrote most of  this second manuscript, which we called \"Genetical implications of  the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid.\" We had less than a week to  complete it and as soon we had finished the drawings it went off with  Sir Leonard Bragg's imprint to appear in the May 30 issue of \u003ci\u003eNature\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300572385509,"sku":"NP9780375727153","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375727153.jpg?v=1767727921","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/genes-girls-and-gamow-isbn-9780375727153","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}