What Mad Pursuit Read online

  There is a more general argument, however, proposed by Gunther Stent and supported by such a sophisticated thinker as Peter Medawar. This is that if Watson and I had not discovered the structure, instead of being revealed with a flourish it would have trickled out and that its impact would have been far less. For this sort of reason Stent had argued that a scientific discovery is more akin to a work of art than is generally admitted. Style, he argues, is as important as content.

  I am not completely convinced by this argument, at least in this case. Rather than believe that Watson and Crick made the DNA structure, I would rather stress that the structure made Watson and Crick. After all, I was almost totally unknown at the time, and Watson was regarded, in most circles, as too bright to be really sound. But what I think is overlooked in such arguments is the intrinsic beauty of the DNA double helix. It is the molecule that has style, quite as much as the scientists. The genetic code was not revealed all in one go, but it did not lack for impact once it had been pieced together. I doubt if it made all that much difference that it was Columbus who discovered America. What mattered much more was that people and money were available to exploit the discovery when it was made. It is this aspect of the history of the DNA structure that I think demands attention, rather than the personal elements in the act of discovery, however interesting they may be as an object lesson (good or bad) to other workers.

  It is really for the historian of science to decide how our structure was received. This is not an easy question to answer because there was naturally a spectrum of opinion that changed with time. There is no doubt, however, that it had a considerable and immediate impact on an influential group of active scientists. Mainly due to Max Delbrück, copies of the initial three papers were distributed to all those attending the 1953 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium, and Watson’s talk on DNA was added to the program. A little later I gave a lecture at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, which I am told produced considerable interest, partly I think because I mixed an enthusiastic presentation of our ideas with a fairly cool assessment of the experimental evidence, roughly on the lines of the article that appeared in Scientific American in October 1954. Sydney Brenner, who had just finished his Ph.D. at Oxford under Hinshelwood, appointed himself, in the summer of 1954, as our representative at Cold Spring Harbor. He took some pains to get the ideas over to Milislav Demerec, who was then the director. (Sydney was to move from South Africa to Cambridge in 1957. He became my closest colleague, sharing an office with me for almost twenty years.) But not everyone was convinced. Barry Commoner (now an environmentalist) insisted, with some force, that physicists oversimplified biology, in which he was not completely wrong. Chargaff, when I visited him in the winter of 1953-54, told me (with his customary insight) that while our first paper in Nature was interesting, our second paper on the genetic implications was no good at all. I was mildly surprised to find when, in 1959, I talked with Fritz Lipmann (the distinguished biochemist), who had arranged for my lecture series at the Rockefeller, I learned that he had not really grasped our scheme of DNA replication. (It emerged that he had been talking to Chargaff.) By the end of the lectures, however, he gave a remarkably clear outline of our ideas in his summing up. The biochemist Arthur Kornberg has told me that when he began work on DNA replication, he did not believe in our mechanism, but his own brilliant experiments soon made him a convert, though always a careful and critical one. His work produced the first good experimental evidence that the two chains run in opposite directions. All in all, it seems to me that we got a very fair hearing, better than Avery and certainly a lot better than Mendel.

  What was it like to live with the double helix? I think we realized almost immediately that we had stumbled onto something important. According to Jim, I went into the Eagle, the pub across the road where we lunched every day, and told everyone that we’d discovered the secret of life. Of that I have no recollection, but I do recall going home and telling Odile that we seemed to have made a big discovery. Years later she told me that she hadn’t believed a word of it. “You were always coming home and saying things like that,” she said, “so naturally I thought nothing of it.” Bragg was in bed with flu at the time, but as soon as he saw the model and grasped the basic idea he was immediately enthusiastic. All past differences were forgiven and he became one of our strongest supporters. We had a constant stream of visitors, a contingent from Oxford that included Sydney Brenner, so that Jim soon began to tire of my repetitious enthusiasm. In fact at times he had cold feet, thinking that perhaps it was all a pipe dream, but the experimental data from King’s College, when we finally saw them, were a great encouragement. By summer most of our doubts had vanished and we were able to take a long cool look at the structure, sorting out its accidental features (which were somewhat inaccurate) from its really fundamental properties, which time has shown to be correct.

  For a number of years after that, things were fairly quiet. I named my family’s Cambridge house in Portugal Place “The Golden Helix” and eventually erected a simple brass helix on the front of it, though it was a single helix rather than a double one. It was supposed to symbolize not DNA but the basic idea of a helix. I called it golden in the same way that Apuleius called his story “The Golden Ass,” meaning beautiful. People have often asked me whether I intend to gild it, but we never got further than painting it yellow.

  Finally one should perhaps ask the personal question—am I glad that it happened as it did? I can only answer that I enjoyed every moment of it, the downs as well as the ups. It certainly helped me in my subsequent propaganda for the genetic code. But to convey my own feelings, I cannot do better than quote from a brilliant and perceptive lecture I heard years ago in Cambridge by the painter John Minton in which he said of his own artistic creations, “The important thing is to be there when the picture is painted.” And this, it seems to me, is partly a matter of luck and partly good judgment, inspiration, and persistent application.

  There was in the early fifties a small, somewhat exclusive biophysics club at Cambridge, called the Hardy Club, named after a Cambridge zoologist of a previous generation who had turned physical chemist. The list of those early members now has an illustrious ring, replete with Nobel laureates and Fellows of the Royal Society, but in those days we were all fairly young and most of us not particularly well known. We boasted only one F.R.S.—Alan Hodgkin—and one member of the House of Lords—Victor Rothschild. Jim was asked to give an evening talk to this select gathering. The speaker was customarily given dinner first at Peterhouse. The food there was always good but the speaker was also plied with sherry before dinner, wine with it, and, if he was so rash as to accept them, drinks after dinner as well. I have seen more than one speaker struggling to find his way into his topic through a haze of alcohol. Jim was no exception. In spite of it all he managed to give a fairly adequate description of the main points of the structure and the evidence supporting it, but when he came to sum up he was quite overcome and at a loss for words. He gazed at the model, slightly bleary-eyed. All he could manage to say was “It’s so beautiful, you see, so beautiful!” But then, of course, it was.

  7

  Books and Movies About DNA

  OVER THE YEARS the discovery of the double helix has attracted the attention of a wide variety of people, from historians of science to Hollywood filmmakers. The best-known written account is Jim Watson’s The Double Helix. This was a best-seller when first published in 1968 and has sold steadily ever since. It attracted a lot of interesting reviews, the best of which are included in the critical edition, published by Norton. Chargaff, rather typically, refused to allow his own review to be reprinted. There is an excellent review of the reviews by Gunther Stent, which puts the book and the various reviewers firmly and accurately into perspective.

  I recall that when Jim was writing his book he read a chapter to me while we were dining together at a small restaurant near Harvard Square. I found it difficult to take his account seriously. “Who,” I asked myself
, “could possibly want to read stuff like this?” Little did I know! My years of concentration on the fascinating problems of molecular biology had, in some respects, led me to live in an ivory tower. Since all the people I met were mainly concerned with the intellectual interest of these problems, I must have tacitly assumed that everyone was like that. Now I know better. The average adult can usually enjoy something only if it relates to what he knows already, and what he knows about science is in many cases pitifully inadequate. What almost everybody is familiar with is the vagaries of personal behavior. People find it much easier to appreciate stories of competition, frustration, and animosity, against a background of parties, foreign girls, and punting on the river, than the details of the science involved.

  I now appreciate how skillful Jim was, not only in making the book read like a detective story (several people have told me they were unable to put it down) but also by managing to include a surprisingly large amount of the science, although naturally the more mathematical parts had to be left out. The only surprising part of the book is Jim’s reference to his thinking about the Nobel Prize. Max Perutz, John Kendrew, and I had never heard Jim talk in this way, so that if he really was thinking about Stockholm he must have kept it strictly to himself. To us he appeared strongly motivated by the scientific importance of the problem. It didn’t occur to me that our discovery was prizeworthy till as late as 1956, and then only because of a casual remark Frank Putnam made to me on the subject.

  Fortunately for those who really want to know what it was all about, more scholarly works exist. Robert Olby, in The Path to the Double Helix, has taken the story from the development of the idea of macromolecules up to the discovery itself. Horace Freeland Judson’s account, entitled The Eighth Day of Creation (probably suggested by the publisher), is in some ways more vivid, since it contains lengthy verbatim quotations from most of the participants. His story begins nearer in time to the discovery of the double helix and continues for another dozen years or so until the genetic code was unraveled. Both are big, thick books. They may take a little time to get into but they provide the most complete and the most balanced accounts so far of the beginnings of classical molecular biology.

  In the early 1970s I was approached by the late Ronnie Fouracre, who wanted to make a documentary about the discovery. Jim and Maurice agreed to take part. The shooting at Cambridge took about three days, a small part of it being shot in the Eagle. Afterward Odile and I hosted a lively party for the film crew at the Golden Helix—so lively that Ronnie regretted he hadn’t brought his cameras along to shoot some of it for the film. The filming itself was strenuous but enjoyable. Only when it was all over did I realize that in the excitement I had completely forgotten Odile’s birthday, something I have never done before or since.

  Ronnie made two distinct versions. One, a more technical film, was for universities and schools. The other was for a lay audience. He had some trouble getting the latter film into shape and about three distinct versions were produced, partly in collaboration with the BBC. I thought the final version, with the commentary by Isaac Asimov, was the best. One version or another appeared under the Horizon label in England or the Nova label in the States.

  Over the years there were jokes about other possible formats. Could it be made into a musical comedy, for example? Sydney Brenner had worked out a scenario of the story as a Western. Jim was to be the lone cowboy; Max, the telegraph clerk; and I, the riverboat gambler! The details, lovingly embroidered, produced much hilarity in his listeners.

  Jim had other ambitions. He hoped for a full-length feature movie. From 1976 I lived in Southern California and occasionally met people from the film world. At one point 20th Century Fox appeared to show some interest, but they did not follow up. Eventually we were approached by Larry Bachmann, a well-established American film producer. I was very reluctant to give my permission. Larry allowed Odile and me, with two friends, to see part of the shooting of his latest film Whose Life Is It, Anyway? Later he asked us to see the “rough”—the first complete, though in some respects unfinished, version.

  Before going to Hollywood, I had decided to oppose the making of any movie about our discovery of the double helix, and had even drafted a letter to that effect, but seeing the film Larry had produced made me change my mind. He had managed to handle an important theme in a serious manner, relieved by many light touches of humor. Before long Jim and I had acquired both a Hollywood agent and a Hollywood lawyer. We visited a couple of other producers who had expressed an interest but they seemed to us caricatures of the “typical” Hollywood producer, being mainly concerned with turning the story into another blood-and-thunder. Larry, on the other hand, showed a serious interest in the discovery, though what mainly appealed to him was the drama of the story and the cast of characters. And what a cast! The Brash Young Man from the Midwest, the Englishman who talks too much (and therefore must be a genius since geniuses either talk all the time or say nothing at all), the older generation, replete with Nobel Prizes, and best of all, a Liberated Woman who appears to be unfairly treated. And in addition some of the characters actually quarrel, in fact almost come to blows. The layman is delighted to learn that after all, in spite of science being so impossibly difficult to understand, scientists are human, even though the word human more accurately describes the behavior of mammals rather than anything peculiar to our own species, such as mathematics.

  Larry took some pains to read up on the various accounts of the discovery and to talk to many of the people involved. Before he could begin, a long contract that dealt with all foreseeable contingencies had to be written and signed. For example, it was set out at length exactly what share of the profits (if any) we would get if indeed a musical comedy were made. We also, as I recall, retained any comic book rights. We obtained these concessions because no filmmaker likes to start on a film about someone still living unless that person has signed a release that an actor may impersonate him. Otherwise there is the danger that the filmmaker may have a legal injunction slapped on him in the middle of shooting, which financially would be ruinous, whatever the outcome. We had some minor degree of protection: We could sue them if they imputed criminal acts to us, or acts of sexual perversion, but if they damaged our professional reputation we were to have no recourse. We soon learned that, as in other walks of life, the man who pays the piper calls the tune. It may take a quarter of a million dollars to produce a screenplay, while the whole movie is likely to cost something on the order of ten million dollars. The more money involved, the less say one has. “I hope you realize,” said our agent, the first time we met him, “that they can put in anything about you they like.” When we taxed Larry with this he simply said, “You have to trust me,” and up to a point we did.

  However, I told Larry that I believed that it was impossible to make a full-length feature movie of the story, since it did not contain enough sex and violence. Over a period of several years he and various coauthors tried hard to produce a suitable film script, but eventually it turned out as I predicted. The final version was rejected by the backers, even though a small amount of violence and sex had been added to color up the story.

  It must be a general rule that the more sophisticated the treatment of a story, the smaller the audience it can command. The audience needed to make a feature movie pay is far too big for the DNA story. Rather, the story is more suitable for a play or, possibly, a limited-distribution movie. The problem is not helped by the fact that the older members of the potential audience, although they may have heard of DNA, hardly know what it is, whereas to some of the younger members the structure is old hat, since they learned all about it at school.

  Larry Bachmann now lives in a charming manor house in a village a few miles from Oxford. He was given dining rights at Green College, and they liked him so much that they made him a Fellow. He keeps himself busy reorganizing Oxford tennis (being a keen tennis player), encouraging the local theatricals, and even advising the university on how to raise mon
ey. We meet from time to time, either at Oxford or at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, to chat about the ways of the world.

  In 1984 Jim and I were approached by the BBC. Mick Jackson, a BBC producer, wanted to make a docudrama about the discovery of DNA. (“Docudrama” implies something between a documentary and a drama.) It would attempt to be closer to the facts than the usual movie treatment but would shape the story to make it theatrically attractive. Jim and I and the other characters would be played by actors.

  I was in favor of the BBC doing something, mainly because of its reputation for careful and fairly accurate productions. Jim, although at first attracted, eventually withdrew his collaboration, saying to me that he thought the BBC treatment would be too dull. What exactly Jim had in mind for a more exciting version was never spelled out.

  I was consulted by both Mick Jackson and the scriptwriter, Bill Nicholson. Much research was done by Jane Callander, who became very familiar with the characters involved and the details of the story. The 106-minute program, called Life Story, went on the air in England on April 27, 1987. The American version, called Double Helix, went out on the Arts and Entertainment channel later that year. Jim is played by Jeff Goldblum, I am played by Tim Pigott-Smith, Maurice by Alan Howard, and Rosalind by Juliet Stevenson. Most of the reviews were favorable, as was the considerable phone-in response to the BBC. I was mildly surprised that it had been so well received, but Mick told me that a large segment of the British viewing public were astonished to find that scientists behaved as human beings. When I said that I thought Jim’s book had already made that idea very familiar, Mick pointed out that many TV viewers had probably never read it.