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Robert Olby, The Path to the Double Helix (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974).
Gunther Stent's Molecular Genetics (1st ed., 1971; 2nd ed., written jointly with Richard Calendar, San Francisco: Freeman, 1978) is an outstanding presentation of the fundamentals of the subject, with considerable emphasis on historical aspects. Its aim is to introduce students to the field, whereas Judson is aiming at a more general audience. The two books are very different in character, but no discussion of work in this area would be complete without reference to Stent.
E. Chargaff, Heraclitean Fire, (New York: 1978), Rockefeller, I have reviewed the book in Isis, 70, (1979), 276–277.
Concerning Avery and his work, see particularly R. Rubos The Professor, the Institute, and DNA (New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1976).
See the recent symposium on the history of protein chemistry, Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., 325, (1979), 1–373, which contains much illuminating historical material. In the present connection the papers by J. S. Fruton and D. C. Hodgkin are relevant.
J. Monod, Chance and Necessity, trans. Austryn Wainhouse (New York: Knopf, 1971), p. 96.
This, the “tetranucleotide hypothesis,” is usually ascribed to Phoebus A. T. Levene of the Rockefeller Institute. How strongly he really believed it is not quite clear, but he did nothing to dispel belief in it. His analytical methods were far too inaccurate to permit drawing reliable conclusions; but Levene had done fundamental work in showing that the sugar in DNA was deoxyribose, and in establishing the chemical linkages between the sugar and the attached base, and between the sugar and the phosphate groups that link it to its two nearest neighbors in the polynucleotide chain. Levene was a great organic chemist, but he did not really understand the chemistry of macromolecules, though late in his career he came to recognize that DNA molecules were very large. For an evaluation of Levene, and of many other developments in the chemistry of DNA, see F. H. Portugal and J. S. Cohen, A Century of DNA (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977). Lack of space forbids further discussion here of this significant book.
One must note that Sanger's techniques, as he of course fully acknoledged, depended heavily on the development of partition chromatography by A. J. P. Martin and R. L. M. Synge in the early 1940s. The immense resolving power of this simple method, in separating cleanly the members of a group of closely related substances, opened up experiments previously impossible. Judson does not mention this, or other related technical developments, but they are of prime importance in understanding the rapidity of scientific advance in our time.
See, e.g., C. J. Epstein, R. F. Goldberger, and C. B. Anfinsen, “The Genetic Control of Tertiary Protein Structure: Studies with Model Systems,” Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 28 (1963) 439–449.
Judson gives an excellent account of this fundamental work. Interested readers may also wish to turn to Zamecnik's own recent account, “Historical Aspects of Protein Synthesis,” Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci, 325 (1979) 269–294, with a discussion following on pp. 294–301.
Origins of Molecular Biology: A Tribute to Jacques Monod, ed. A. Lwoff and A. Ullmann (New York: Academic Press, 1979).
A. Lwoff, “Jacques Lucien Monod (1910–1976),” Biog. Mem. Roy. Soc. London, 23 (1977), 385–412.
For those concerned with the work of Monod and his associates at the Pasteur Institute, it is of great value that we now have Selected Papers in Molecular Biology by Jacques Monod, ed. A Lwoff and A. Ullmann (New York: Academic Press, 1979). This makes all of Monod's major papers, including his great studies with Jacob, conveniently available in a single collection.
J. T. Edsall, “Blood and Hemoglobin,” J. Hist. Biol., 5 (1972), 205–257.
I have discussed these topics, and others, briefly in a recent article, “Hemoglobin and the Origins of the Concept of Allosterism,” Federation Proceedings, in press (1980).
Z. Dische, “Sur l'interdependence des divers enzymes du systeme glycolytique et sur la régulation automatique de leur activité dans les cellules,” Bulletin de la Societe Chimique de Chimie Biologique, 23 (1941), 1140–1148.
J. Monod, J.-P. Changeux, and F. Jacob, “Allosteric Proteins and Cellular Control Systems,” J. Mol. Biol., 6 (1963), 306–329.
J. Monod, J. Wyman, and J.-P. Changeux, “On the Nature of Allosteric Transitions: A Plausible Model,” J. Mol. Biol., 12 (1965), 88–118.
Robert Olby, The Path to the Double Helix (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974).
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
For accounts of these new developments, see, for instance, Francis Crick, “Split Genes and RNA Splicing,” Science, 204 (1979), 264–271; and John Abelson, “RNA Proceesing and the Intervening Sequence Problem,” Ann. Rev. Biochem., 48 (1979), 1035–1069.
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Edsall, J.T. Essay review Horace Judson and the molecular biologists. J Hist Biol 13, 141–158 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00125357
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00125357