Double Helix

  • Climbing Mount Irascible

    January 28, 2022

    If the scientific autobiography belongs to “a most awkward literary genre,” the scientific book review must belong to a decidedly tedious one. And Erwin Chargaff’s review of Watson’s The Double Helix is the exception that proves the rule. In 1968, Gunther Stent (a contemporary of Jim Watson and a fellow member of the Phage Group) wrote a review called What they are saying about Honest Jim in the Quarterly Review of Biology (Vol. 43-2, 1968) (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/405728). This piece was what one might call a meta-review – a “review of the reviewers” – where Stent turns over (at times

  • What I don’t understand about the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology

    / July 26, 2021

    “DNA makes RNA makes protein makes money” While it is true that, in general, scientists have not much time for history – or to put it another way: Nor do I suggest that the history of science may not be profoundly interesting as history. What I am saying is that it does not often interest the scientist as science. PB Medowar (New York Review of Books, March 28, 1968, pp 3-5) But if there is a “historical” book (and I use the term “historical” cavalierly) that every scientist has read –