Word: helixes
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...whatever their formal duties, both men were determined to figure out what genes were, and both were convinced that understanding the structure of DNA would help them do that. "Now, with me around the lab always wanting to talk about genes," writes Watson in The Double Helix, "Francis no longer kept his thoughts about DNA in a back recess of his brain ... No one should mind if, by spending only a few hours a week thinking about DNA, he helped me solve a smashingly important problem...
...written the book on chemical bonds. A few months before Watson arrived, in fact, Pauling embarrassed the Cavendish by winning the race to figure out the structure of keratin, the protein that makes up hair and fingernails. (It was a long, complex corkscrew of atoms known as the alpha-helix.) While he did rely on X-ray crystallographs for hints to what was going on at the molecular level, Pauling depended more heavily on scaled-up models he built by hand, using his deep knowledge of the ways atoms can bond together. Cavendish scientists, relying mostly on X rays, hadn...
...much of a flap if he showed up.) Wilkins had warned Watson that Franklin was difficult; for his part, Watson had a generally piggish attitude toward women at the time. He liked "popsies"--young, pretty things without brains--but strong, independent women rather baffled him. In The Double Helix, he puts Franklin down in a passage that he later had the decency to renounce...
...weeks later, Crick and Watson were pretty sure they had it. DNA was a triple helix. They invited Wilkins to take a look at their model, and to their surprise, Franklin came along too. It didn't take long for everyone to realize that Watson's memory had betrayed him. The amount of water a DNA molecule had to contain was a whopping 10 times the quantity he had assumed. The structure Crick and Watson had so confidently come up with was impossible...
...warn Wilkins and Franklin about Pauling's near miss. On Friday, Jan. 30, he went to London. Wilkins wasn't in his lab, so Watson dropped in on Franklin. What happened next--from Watson's point of view, at least--was recorded in great detail in The Double Helix. The passage shows how formidable Franklin could be but also demonstrates Watson's adolescent delight in needling her. He tried to engage Franklin in debate about the idea that DNA was helical, which she still insisted was unsupported by evidence. "Rosy by then was hardly able to control her temper...