The Double Helix: Chapters 15–22

No seats were left on the overnight Glasgow train, giving us a ten-hour journey seated on luggage listening to Val comment on the dull, boorish habits of the Americans who each year are deposited in increasing numbers at Oxford.

The affirmative reply I received with much relief, since it was inconceivable that my sister could think about settling in Denmark after two weeks of an eccentric country house.

The affirmative reply I received with much relief, since it was inconceivable that my sister could think about settling in Denmark after two weeks of an eccentric country house.

Dinner was still going on as we emerged from a stone passage, which connected the gunroom with several larders, into a dining room dominated by sharp authoritative chatter.

There was also the warming diversion of going to the library to play ping-pong beneath Wyndham Lewis’ stern drawings of Naomi and her children.

Naomi and several of the women dressed for dinner, but I put this aberrant behavior down as a sign of approaching old age.

The best way to rectify the situation was to avoid a barber until I merged with the Cambridge scene.

The most ruthless of the murder addicts was Av’s sister Lois, then just back from teaching for a year in Karachi, and a firm proponent of the hypocrisy of Indian vegetable eaters.

After the war Fankuchen lost interest in viruses, and, though Bernal dabbled at protein crystallography, he was more concerned about furthering good relations with the Communist countries.

The most plausible hypothesis for the TMV structure was a central RNA core surrounded by a large number of identical small protein subunits.

As I read Bernal’s paper, however, I suddenly became enthusiastic about Schramm, for, if he had misinterpreted his data, by accident he had hit upon the right answer.

Every time the calculations were properly done, the paradoxical answer emerged that the crystals could not grow at anywhere near the observed rates.

Frank saw that the paradox vanished if crystals were not as regular as suspected, but contained dislocations resulting in the perpetual presence of cozy corners into which new molecules could fit.

Francis again demurred, this time wisely.

His trip abruptly terminated at Idlewild through the removal of his passport.

A first-rate Russian might easily abscond to the more affluent West.

The debacle was no surprise to several of us who had just been in Oxford for a Society of General Microbiology meeting on “The Nature of Viral Multiplication.”

No one could match the smooth erudition of Bawden or the assured nihilism of Pirie, who strongly disliked the notion that in Paris on the way to the Riviera, spring 1952.

No one could match the smooth erudition of Bawden or the assured nihilism of Pirie, who strongly disliked the notion that in Paris on the way to the Riviera, spring 1952.

The telltale helical markings were unmistakable.

The following morning I anxiously awaited Francis’ arrival to confirm the helical diagnosis.

Knowing that Griffith was interested in theoretical schemes for gene replication, he popped out with the idea that the perfect biological principle was the self-replication of the gene—that is, the ability of a gene to be exactly copied when the chromosome number doubles during cell division.

Griffith, however, did not go along, since for some months he had preferred a scheme where gene copying was based upon the alternative formation of complementary surfaces.

They could not provide the necessary exact specificity, since our chemist friends repeatedly told us that the hydrogen atoms in the purine and pyrimidine bases did not have fixed locations but randomly moved from one spot to another.

A trace of a sardonic smile was all the recognition I got when we passed in the courtyard outside the massive Salle Richelieu of the Sorbonne.

Delbriick’s speedy approval pleased me, for he had ambivalent feelings about the ultimate value to biology of Pauling-like structural studies.

A lecture was hastily arranged for the session at which Perutz spoke.

While I felt at ease giving my talk on TMV in shorts, the French contingent feared that I would go one step further by arriving at Sans Souci in the same outfit.

For an instant I was puzzled, until I realized that Lwoff had thought it prudent to warn the Baroness about an unclothed guest who might prove eccentric.

To Francis’ dismay, I showed little tendency to concentrate on DNA when my summer holiday ended.

The mating habits of bacteria were admittedly a unique conversation piece —absolutely no one in his and Odile’s social circle would guess bacteria had sex lives.

Despite Joshua’s fabulous cranium, the genetics of bacteria became messier each year.

To my delight I made sense of almost all the previously bewildering genetic crosses.

The following morning, after I was told about the futility of the lunch, Francis tried to generate enthusiasm for our having a second go at the structure.

Thus there was growing acceptance both in and outside Cambridge that Francis’ brain was a genuine asset.

Harker, having collected a million dollars to solve the structure of the enzyme ribonuclease, was in search of talent, and the offer of six thousand for one year seemed to Odile wonderfully generous.

At short notice Max and John thought I would have the best chance to be accepted by one of the small colleges, since they had relatively fewer research students than the large, more prestigious, and wealthy colleges like Trinity or King’s.

There were some fuzzy data using sea urchins, interpreted as a transformation of DNA into RNA, but I preferred to trust other experiments showing that DNA molecules, once synthesized, are very very stable.

Peter’s presence meant that, whenever more science was pointless, the conversation could dwell on the comparative virtues of girls from England, the Continent, and California.

A fetching face, however, had nothing to do with the broad grin on Peter’s face when he sauntered into the office one afternoon in the
middle of December and put his feet up on his desk.

Francis then began pacing up and down the room thinking aloud, hoping that in a great intellectual fervor he could reconstruct what Linus might have done.

A quick visit to Cavalli in Milan, which occurred just after my skiing holiday in Zermatt, had convinced me that my speculations about how bacteria mated were likely to be right.

Thus, under physiological conditions, there would always be positively charged ions like sodium or magnesium lying nearby to neutralize the negatively charged phosphate groups.

Thus, under physiological conditions, there would always be positively charged ions like sodium or magnesium lying nearby to neutralize the negatively charged phosphate groups.

Now our immediate hope was that his chemical colleagues would be more than ever awed by his intellect and not probe the details of his model.