Word: raye
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...might be in a better position to understand how genes work. Here was someone who appreciated what Watson already believed but which many scientists didn't yet accept: that the genetic code was somehow tied up in the physical structure of DNA. He realized he needed to understand X-ray diffraction and wanted to join Wilkins in London but never got an opportunity to ask him. So Watson wangled the next best position--a fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, where the director, Sir William Lawrence Bragg, had (with his father Sir William) developed X-ray crystallography...
...switched into biology; like Wilkins and Watson, Crick had been impressed with Schrodinger's What Is Life? He wasn't actually studying DNA, though; at age 35, thanks in part to a hiatus for military work in World War II, he was still pursuing his Ph.D. on the X-ray diffraction of hemoglobin, the iron-carrying protein in blood. Watson, meanwhile, had gone to Cambridge to use X-ray diffraction to understand the structure of another protein, myoglobin...
...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't bothered to consult their colleagues...
Franklin believed deeply in the primacy of experimental data: Pauling might have been lucky with his flashy model building, but the best way to understand DNA, she insisted, was to make high-quality X-ray images first and speculate afterward about what they meant. "Only a genius of [Pauling's] stature," writes Watson, summarizing Franklin's attitude, "could play like a ten-year-old boy and still get the right answer." Wilkins made the mistake of declaring publicly that Franklin's images suggested that DNA had a helical shape. Franklin was incensed. He had no right, she believed, to even...
Besides, they couldn't give up, because Pauling was now on the case for sure. He had written to Wilkins, then to Wilkins' boss, J.T. Randall, asking for copies of King's X-ray images. Both men declined. But Pauling was coming to a Royal Society meeting in May 1952; it would be tougher to refuse him in person. As Pauling was preparing to board a plane in New York, however, the U.S. government seized his passport, citing what they considered his dangerous left-wing political views. While that setback might delay Pauling, Watson and Crick knew it would...