by James Watson.
After reading “The Code Breaker”, in which DNA and James Watson are repeatedly mentioned, I thought it would be a good idea to read “The Double Helix” by Watson again. I had bought the book and read it shortly after it came out in 1968, but, along with many books in my former “library”, I had given it away when we moved from Mississippi to California in 2011. So, I bought a paper-back version from Amazon. Re-reading the book brought back many memories about one’s youth, and a reminder that more than half a century had passed since Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. Several of the main players are no longer with us: Francis Crick, Linus Pauling, Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, Sir Lawrence Bragg. James Watson is 92 years old. While re-reading the book, several thoughts came to my mind: When Watson and Crick were reasonably sure that double helix was the structure of DNA, “Francis winged into the Eagle to tell everyone within hearing distance that they had found the secret of life”, recalled Watson. Really? I thought to myself. After all, how could we claim to have found the secret of life when we still do not know the definitive answers to questions such as: (a) Will death reveal the meaning of life? (b) Are we created by some ultra-intelligent beings in a simulation game, which even some renowned physicists seem to believe? In the Introduction by Sylvia Nasar, author of “A Beautiful Mind”, she stated that “Neither is dullness something that readers of the Double Helix run the slightest risk of encountering”. Nobel Prize Physics Laureate Richard Feynman stated that “He (Watson) has described admirably how it feels to have that frightening and beautiful experience of making scientific discovery.” While there is no reason to disagree with these statements, I wonder how many readers who are not well versed in biomolecular biology understand many of the scientific descriptions in the book. For example, in Chapter 25, I certainly enjoyed Watson’s narrative of his disappointment, and those of his companion movie goers, including a number of Cambridge undergraduates, that in the movie Ecstasy, “the only swimming scene left intact by the English Censors was an inverted reflection from a pool of water”. Later in the same chapter, I found it difficult to follow Watson’s excitement that “suddenly I realized the potentially profound implications of a DNA structure in which the adenine residue formed by hydrogen bonds similar to those found in crystals of pure adenine.” I wonder this dichotomy of enjoying one part and unable to appreciate another part of the book is just my own experience or is common to many readers, even though everyone, when asked, would praise how great the book is. Watson certainly was the type who “tells it like it is”. Even late in life, he refused to walk back his racially insensitive comments when given the chance to do so, because he was incapable of not telling the truth, according to his own assessment. It is sad that at age 92, his own Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, had cut all ties with him since 2019. Perhaps, back in 1967, when he started the book with the frank but somewhat offensive statement “I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood“, already signaled that trouble awaits down the road. Somewhat differently but fittingly, the book ends with an epilogue containing a moving tribute to Rosalind Franklin, whom he had some rather disparaging comments earlier in the book.
Link of review in amazon.com. (review placed 2nd among 1394 ratings as of 4/4/23)
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