We have discovered the secret of life.
Sarah Jons 
We have discovered the secret of life. I consider myself very honoured and very, very lucky. I didn't know it at the time of course.
We have discovered the secret of life. I consider myself very honoured and very, very lucky. I didn't know it at the time of course. It was either Albert Einstein or GB Shaw who sighed, upon discovering that there are so many more meaningful things to do in life, and no energy to do them, 'Why must youth be wasted on the young?'
I was born in Cambridge, in the late1950’s, with a brilliant scientific father who was at the cutting edge of research in biochemistry and biological science (mainly into the cause of arthritis, cytokines and discovering the role of lysosomes) and he was mixing with some the finest minds of a generation. Nobel prize winners and scientists with the word ‘genius’ attached to their names were regulars for dinner at our house. I think I went ‘out’ (dated)’ at least 3 daughters of Nobel Prize winners. My father was, at the time, a Deputy Master of a Cambridge College. He later became Master of Hughes Hall in Cambridge. As a young boy, I was allowed to experiment on connective tissues, cells and intervertebral discs in the labs near Addenbrookes Hospital (Strangeway's Research Laboratory on Wort's Causeway, Cambridge): I was 9. I produced my first peer reviewed scientific paper at a ridiculously young age (13). Somehow, through exploring, playing and creating novelty I discovered a causal link between atmospheric lead from petrol (it still was used as an anti-knocking agent) and the lead in the hair of children in my class, by plotting where they lived, statistical sampling and using cutting edge, flame spectrometry. I was 15. Strange times.
Part of my father’s role, when he was at Corpus Christi College, was to be the landlord for the Eagle Pub in Cambridge. Not in an Al Murray, ‘pub landlord’ way but as the licence holder, lease holder and in charge of the premises. I remember going in to the pub in the 1960’s. This grim, smokey (the ceiling had war time pilots names etched into the decaying paint) and slightly seedy public house. It was packed with post graduate students, academics and people drinking a traditional pint.It was also where we parked our car when we went shopping. As a callow, but tall youth (and somehow I got away with under age drinking at 14), we drank a lethal combination of Adnams IPA and Greene King Abbot Ale, mixed together into what we called ‘brain damage’. It was also the site of perhaps the biggest discovery biology has ever seen.
One of my heroes in business is amazing Executive Chairman of Southwest Airlines Herbert D. Kelleher, who’s famous quotation I have on my wall,
'We will hire someone with less experience, less education, and less expertise, than someone who has more of those things and has a rotten attitude. Because we can train people. We can teach people how to lead. We can teach people how to provide customer service. But we can’t change their DNA.'
Those 3 letters, DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid) mean so much to us today and resonate across business, science, medicine, crime, drugs, psychology, neuroscience and so much more. So let’s go back more than 60 years ago to a very special day. A date that every citizen should remember and perhaps we should have a national holiday.
February 28th, 1953.
One of the most important single days in scientific research. The time was 12 noon.And it all happened in a pub called The Eagle. Two men entered this dingy noisy pub to create even more noise. The first was a tall, gangly, 25-year-old American bacteriologist with uncombed hair named James Watson. The second, Francis Crick, was a 37-year-old British physicist who, according to one of his scientific rivals, looked like a bookmaker’s rout. If you haven’t seen the beauty Jeff Goldblum version of the story it is well worth the watch here.
With booming voices and youthful bravado, the odd duo bragged that they, in the words of Francis Crick — or at least in the memory of James Watson recalling the words of Francis Crick,
We have discovered the secret of life.
Let’s be absolutely clear, for the pedantic ones out there and pub quiz gurus, they did not discover DNA. Rather, DNA was first identified in the late 1860s by Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher. Then, in the decades following Miescher's discovery, other scientists–notably, Phoebus Levene and Erwin Chargaff–carried out a series of research efforts that revealed additional details about the DNA molecule, including its primary chemical components and the ways in which they joined with one another. Without the scientific foundation provided by these pioneers, Watson and Crick may never have reached their groundbreaking conclusion of 1953: that the DNA molecule exists in the form of a three-dimensional double helix.
I think that the formation of [DNA’s] structure by Watson and Crick may turn out to be the greatest developments in the field of molecular genetics in recent years.
― Linus Pauling, University of Cambridge, UK, in May 1953.
Watson and Crick worked with three-dimensional models to re-construct the DNA molecule, much as a college student uses those pesky sticks and balls to cram for an organic chemistry exam. Only 50 miles away, however, a team of scientists at King’s College in London was using a relatively new technique called X-ray crystallography to study DNA. One of them, Rosalind Franklin, succeeded in taking an X-ray diffraction pattern from a sample of DNA that showed a clearly recognizable cross or helical shape. Unbeknownst to Franklin, one of her colleagues let Watson see the image a few days earlier.
"Photograph 51". X-ray diffraction photo of a DNA molecule, structure B.
Franklin’s DNA picture experimentally confirmed the correctness of the theoretical double helical model Watson and Crick were developing
We wish to discuss a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid. (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biologic interest.
― Rosalind Franklin
In just one day, history changed forever. As Watson later reflected on the importance of Feb. 28, 1953:
The discovery was made on that day, not slowly over the course of the week. It was simple; instantly you could explain this idea to anyone. You did not have to be a high-powered scientist to see how the genetic material was copied.
They finished building their now-famous model on March 7, 1953.Watson and Crick published their findings in the April 25, 1953, issue of Nature. It was a brief communication that discussed the double helix of DNA and suggested that the two strands of DNA allowed it to create identical copies of itself. Regardless of the report’s brevity, the announcement changed the world of medicine and science forever.
Tragically, in 1958 Rosalind Franklin died of ovarian cancer. She was 37 years old. Watson and Crick, along with Maurice Wilkins (the colleague of Franklin’s who showed Crick her data), won the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1962. But because the Prize rules prevent it from being awarded posthumously, Franklin did not receive the credit she so richly deserved until years after her death.
Many voices have argued that the Nobel Prize should also have been awarded to Rosalind Franklin, since her experimental data provided a very important piece of evidence leading to the solving of the DNA structure. In a recent interview in the magazine Scientific American, Watson himself suggested that it might have been a good idea to give Wilkins and Franklin the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and him and Crick the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – in that way all four would have been honoured.
But 50 years after a particular prize had been awarded, the archives concerning the nominees are released. Therefore, in 2008 it was possible to see whether Rosalind Franklin ever was a nominee for the Nobel Prize concerning the DNA helix. The answer is that no one ever nominated her – neither for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine nor in Chemistry.
Later in life I was to meet Francis Crick, when I was head of Biology at Mill Hill School in North London. He was an Alumni and indeed, the new Science School is named after him. I remember him as being very grumpy, but I got to ask my questions about Rosalind Franklin. He was deeply regretful about what had happened and I think it haunted him all his life.
DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created. – Bill Gates, The Road Ahead
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