Book Review

Commemorating the Double Helix

Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution

N Engl J Med 2003; 348:1728-1729April 24, 2003

Article

Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution
By Victor K. McElheny. 365 pp., illustrated. Cambridge, Mass., Perseus, 2003. $27.50. ISBN: 0-7382-0341-6

Fifty years ago, a young South African student who was destined to win the Nobel prize made the short pilgrimage from Oxford to Cambridge to pay his respects to a chemical model on display in Room 103 of the Cavendish Laboratory. It was, Sydney Brenner reflected later, quite simply the most exciting day of his life.

Working from x-ray crystal photographs taken by others and outdated chemistry textbooks, the two obsessed model builders, Francis Crick and James D. Watson (FigureFrancis Crick and James Watson in Cambridge, United Kingdom. (Courtesy of the James D. Watson Collection, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives.)), had deduced the molecular architecture of DNA, the hereditary material, and in so doing secured their place among the scientific elite. The first account of the model, sketched elegantly by Crick's wife Odile, was published in the April 25, 1953, issue of Nature, accompanied by separate reports from the laboratories of estranged King's College London crystallographers Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, who had (unknowingly) supplied the raw data that inspired the breakthrough. Wilkins went on to share the 1962 Nobel prize with Crick and Watson — Franklin having died in 1958 of ovarian cancer.

After the discovery, the two men, who would talk science incessantly during daily walks around the quadrangles of Cambridge and lengthy lunches in The Eagle pub, slowly drifted apart. After helping to crack the genetic code in the early 1960s, Crick moved to the Salk Institute, turning his attention to neuroscience and the study of consciousness, a field in which he is still a commanding presence.

Watson, meanwhile, mentored a stream of brilliant scientists at Harvard and became even more famous after the 1968 publication of The Double Helix, a spellbinding account of science and scientific mores that Harvard University Press elected not to publish — it duly sold more than 1 million copies. The revolution in molecular biology triggered by the discovery of the double helix continues to play out, from genetic engineering and DNA sequencing in the 1970s to genetic maps and polymerase chain reaction in the 1980s and the birth of the Human Genome Project in the 1990s — a program in which Watson had a crucial role.

With a procession of festivities marking the jubilee of the double helix this year, the publication of Watson and DNA, written by science journalist Victor McElheny, comes at an opportune moment. McElheny's biography is based on a meticulously researched assembly of published reminiscences and fresh interviews with dozens of Watson's peers and former students, providing an absorbing account of his life from the run-up to the modeling of the double helix to his inspirational role as director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. McElheny's account includes many fascinating recollections of the man whom Max Delbrück once hailed as the “Einstein of biology.” Former Harvard students say Watson had the aura of a rock star — an image still in evidence today, as autograph seekers hound him after every lecture. Yet he purposely cultivates the demeanor of a crazed professor, deliberately untying his shoelaces and messing his hair before seeking funds from Long Island's rich and famous.

What is sadly lacking from Watson and DNA is Watson himself. McElheny reported to Watson for several years in his capacity as director of the Banbury Center, but Watson, busy writing his own books, declined to be interviewed for this book. This is a pity. Among the intriguing insights into daily life at Cold Spring Harbor is the poignant fact that Watson's son Rufus, who lives with his parents at the laboratory, is mentally handicapped. In the light of Watson's ardent views on genetic engineering and other medical issues, this matter bears further scrutiny, but the author shies away from it.

It is fitting that the anniversary of the discovery of the double helix coincides with the virtual completion of the Human Genome Project — which might never have been launched in 1990 without Watson's political savvy and determined leadership. Watson lasted only two years as the founding director before falling out with Bernadine Healy, who was then the director of the National Institutes of Health. Curiously, this episode merits only a fleeting mention in the book.

Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard sociobiologist, once dubbed Watson the “Caligula of biology.” Watson is not ashamed of his success and fame, nor does he apologize for his politically incorrect views or his highly publicized infatuation with the fairer sex. But beneath it all, there is a surprising sense of humility. “Francis and I,” he conceded earlier this year, “are famous just because DNA is so beautiful.”

Kevin Davies, Ph.D.
Bio-IT World, Framingham, MA 01701
kevin_davies@bio-itworld.com