Genes, Girls, and Gamow Read online

  ALSO BY JAMES D. WATSON

  The Molecular Biology of the Gene

  (1965, 1970, 1976, 1987 [coauthor])

  The Double Helix:

  A Personal Account of the

  Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968)

  Recombinant DNA (1983, 1993 [coauthor])

  A Passion for DNA: Genes, Genomes, and Society (2000)

  Jim Watson in Moscow at the International Biochemical Congress, 1961.

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2001 by J. D. Watson

  Foreword copyright © 2001 by Peter Pauling

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Originally published in Great Britain in slightly different

  form by Oxford University Press, London, 2001.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are

  registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Watson, James D., 1928–

  Genes, girls, and Gamow: after The Double Helix/James D. Watson.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Borzoi book.”

  eISBN: 978-0-375-41443-5

  1. Watson, James D., 1928– 2. Molecular biologists—United States—Biography.

  I. Watson, James D., 1928– Double Helix. II. Title.

  QH506.W399 2002

  572.8’092—dc21 2001038543

  [B]

  v3.1

  To Celia Gilbert

  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

  —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Foreword

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  Cast of Characters

  Editor’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Cambridge (England): April 1953

  Chapter 2: Cambridge (England): April–May 1953

  Chapter 3: Cold Spring Harbor: June 1953

  Chapter 4: Cambridge (England): July–August 1953

  Chapter 5: New Haven, Northern Indiana, and Pasadena: September 1953

  Chapter 6: Pasadena, Northern Indiana, and the East Coast: October 1953–January 1954

  Chapter 7: Bethesda, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Pasadena: January–February 1954

  Chapter 8: Pasadena: February 1954

  Chapter 9: Pasadena, Berkeley, Urbana, Gatlinburg, and the East Coast: March–April 1954

  Chapter 10: Pasadena: May 1954

  Chapter 11: Woods Hole: June 1954

  Chapter 12: Woods Hole: July 1954

  Chapter 13: Woods Hole: August 1954

  Chapter 14: Woods Hole, New Hampshire, and Cambridge (Mass.): August 1954

  Chapter 15: Northern Indiana and Pasadena: September 1954

  Chapter 16: Pasadena: October 1954

  Chapter 17: Pasadena and Berkeley: November–December 1954

  Chapter 18: Northern Indiana, Cambridge (Mass.), and Washington D.C.: December 1954–January 1955

  Chapter 19: Pasadena and Berkeley: February–March 1955

  Chapter 20: The East Coast, Pasadena, and Woods Hole: March–June 1955

  Chapter 21: Cambridge (England): July 1955

  Chapter 22: The Continent: August 1955

  Chapter 23: Cambridge (England) and Scotland: September 1955

  Chapter 24: Cambridge (England): October 1955

  Chapter 25: Tübingen, Munich, and Cambridge (England): November–December 1955

  Chapter 26: English Lake District and Scotland: December 1955–January 1956

  Chapter 27: Cambridge (England): January–February 1956

  Chapter 28: Cambridge (England): February 1956

  Chapter 29: Cambridge (England), Israel, and Egypt: March–April 1956

  Chapter 30: Cambridge (England): May–June 1956

  Chapter 31: Baltimore, Cold Spring Harbor, and Cambridge (Mass.): June–September 1956

  Epilogue: October 1956–March 1968

  Illustration Credits

  A Note About the Author

  Foreword

  It is reasonable for one to observe the universe about one and report what one sees. After all, there are countless reporters and correspondents who do just that for the media. Also, the first step in the scientific method is to observe and report one’s observations.

  Psychological interpretations, motivations, and intents are rather more dangerous.

  As the chemist Harry Kroto clearly pointed out to me a year ago, “Everything is subjective.” In this book the subject is Jim Watson. There are many other players, real people, a good many of whom will be unhappy with the book (the Victims). Without them, however, there would be no book.

  The information available to me indicates that the stimulus for this book is girls, particularly Christa Mayr. Being slow and egocentric, I did not realize that romantic Jim had such great problems about girls, although there was much evidence available. My problems were rather the opposite.

  As a work of reference to what actually happened, this book is unreliable. There are many mistakes and errors of fact. Some of these are minor and refer to things that Jim did not observe directly.

  I suggest that every coffee table and hairdresser have this book, the latter for the ladies to read under the hairdryer what is in many ways an entertaining book.

  As unappointed leader of the Victims, I hope they will forgive or at least be lenient with both me and Jim.

  PETER PAULING

  Preface

  The chase for the double-helical structure of DNA was an adventure story in the best sense. First, there was a pot of scientific gold to be found—possibly very soon. Second, among the explorers who raced to find it, there was much bravado, unexpected lapses of reason, and painful acceptances of the fates not going well. The early 1950s were not times to be cautious but rather to run fast whenever a path opened up—nuggets of gold might be lying exposed over the next hill. As one of the winners with a fortune much, much bigger than I ever dared hope for, I could not stop moving. There was more genetic loot to be located, and not joining in the further hunt would make me feel old. Out there was the genetic code—the “Rosetta Stone of Life”—that would tell us the rules by which genetic information encoded within DNA molecules is translated into the language of proteins, the molecular workhorses of all living cells.

  From the start, the best path towards the genetic code seemed in or near a still-mysterious molecule called ribonucleic acid, or RNA. Although quite distinct from DNA, it was built along the same lines and might also encode genetic information. In the spring of 1953, I had no idea what RNA looked like, and this book, in part, is the story of its pursuit. Conceivably mere inspection of RNA’s three-dimensional form would tell us the genetic code and set us towards the molecular machinery that uses its rules to translate the language of DNA into the language of proteins.

  In this search I again often had Francis Crick with me. But fates sometimes placed us thousands of miles apart, and many of my steps towards unraveling RNA were in the company of newer friends. For the most part, they had seen forests of seemingly impenetrable molecules before and knew approximately what clothes to wear and the tools needed to cut the thickets ahead. Quite differ
ent was the truly bizarre explorer, the Russian-born, George Gamow. Theoretical physicist extraordinaire, and a six-foot, six-inch giant to boot, “Geo,” as he ended his letters, defied conventional description with his penchant for tricks that masked a mind that always thought big. Together we were to form a club with a tie that he designed and called the RNA Tie Club. To its 20 members, Francis Crick sent his famous 1955 “Adaptor Hypothesis” that he never published elsewhere. Our club became part of the history of molecular biology.

  For years I have wanted to write about how the RNA Tie Club came into existence, inserting Geo’s oft-illustrated, wacky letters into the intellectual climate that surrounded the spiritual upheaval among biologists after the discovery of the double helix. I could have restricted the story to scientific issues, but have placed it instead within the context of my own personal life, itself strongly influenced by the lives of my friends. The story starts when I was an unmarried 25-year-old and thought more about girls than genes. It is as much a tale of love as of ideas.

  Like with The Double Helix, I try to capture the spirit of my youth and purposely do not make reflective judgment on where I was going right or wrong. Recapitulating the essence of times long ago, however, risks repeating long-held mismemories. Luckily and graciously put at my disposal were some 60 letters that I wrote to Christa Mayr Menzel between July 1953 and December 1955. In rereading them, I found an almost diary-like description of the people then entering my life as well as my scientific brainstorms of the moment. I also faithfully kept all the letters that I received from other close acquaintances of that period.

  By purposely not judging my actions of those past days, I risk upsetting readers who want to see me as I am today, rather than as the inexperienced and more self-centered person I once was. There will be other readers, possibly not so harsh on my character either then or now, who nonetheless feel that many of the personal facts I write below are not worth being passed on to the future. Almost everyone goes awry in some aspect of their human lives, and what I describe may not be that unusual. But for better or worse, I and my friends were present at the birth of the DNA paradigm—by any standard one of the great moments in the history of science, if not of the human species. In this way we were unique players in a momentous drama.

  Thus there will be many readers wanting to know better what actually happened in our lives. This story is no second romp to a double-helix-like discovery, but it has Geo Gamow to keep us on our toes. A giant imp, jumping from atoms to genes to space travel, he was simultaneously there to admire when clever and to comfort when his life was going backwards. Perhaps wisely, Geo never counted on ever finishing the big chases he started. So he always sought fun on the way. Thinking now back on my life, Geo was a much wiser individual than I first judged him.

  Acknowledgments

  The turning of my first draft into this more taut version benefited from comments from many friends. All the major participants were sent one or more drafts to let them tell me where their memories of events differed from mine. Donald Caspar, Francis Crick, Paul Doty, Celia Gilbert, Hugh Huxley, Leslie Orgel, Peter and Alicia Pauling, and Baroness Janet Stewart Whitaker all so helped me. In addition, I benefited from comments by John Cairns, Richard Dawkins, Nancy Hopkins, Gordon Lish, Cynthia MacKay, Victor McElheny, Benno Müeller-Hill, Mark Ptashne, Matt and Anya Ridley, Peter Sherwood, Jan Witkowski, and Norton Zinder.

  As I still write by hand, without my very competent assistant Maureen Berejka’s help in deciphering my writing and transferring it to her word processor, this book could not have appeared. I must also thank Ramah McKay for correcting my grammar and and urging me to shorten unnecessarily wordy sentences.

  In Michael Rodgers of Oxford University Press and George Andreou of Knopf, I have benefited from seasoned editors of taste. They not only know words best unsaid, but equally important, paragraphs best left in to faithfully record how the post double-helix world unfolded.

  Lastly, I must acknowledge my wife Liz’s continued warm support and encouragement going back to when she typed early chapters during summers at our then house on Vincent Square in London. Many subsequent chapters were written in Oxford in the spring of 1994 when I was the Newton Abraham Professor attached to Lincoln College. I wish to thank its Rector and Fellows for making our stay there so pleasant. Not wanting then to lose Oxford from our lives, Liz and I later bought a ground floor flat with garden on Northmoor Road. Its solitude let me write the concluding chapters.

  J. D. WATSON

  November 2001

  Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.

  Cast of Characters

  Beadle, George (“Beets”) Geneticist (b. 1903), Head of the Biology Division at Caltech from 1946 to 1961. In 1958, he shared the Nobel Prize with Edward Tatum for experiments at Stanford University connecting genes and proteins.

  Benzer, Seymour Brooklyn-born physicist-turned-geneticist (b. 1921); on the faculty at Purdue University between 1945 and 1967 before moving to Caltech as Professor of Biology.

  Bernal, John Desmond Irish crystallographer (b. 1901) who, in the 1930s, supervised the Cambridge Ph.D. theses of Max Perutz and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin; known for his left-wing politics—his office at Birkbeck College London had a peace dove drawn on its walls by Picasso.

  Bohr, Niels Danish physicist (b. 1885) who was the first to postulate that electrons circle the nucleus in fixed quantum orbits, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. In the 1920s and 30s, his Copenhagen Institute attracted the world’s cleverest theoreticians—its temporary inhabitants included George Gamow, Lev Landau, and Werner Heisenberg.

  Bragg, Sir (William) Lawrence Australian-born (1890) British physicist. His father, Sir William Henry, and he were the effective founders of X-ray crystallography through their 1912 law on how crystals diffract X-rays. For Bragg’s law, they received the 1915 Nobel Prize for Physics. In 1938, W. L. Bragg succeeded Ernest Rutherford as the head of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.

  Brenner, Sydney Raised in South Africa (b. 1927), he obtained a medical qualification from Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg before moving, in 1951, to Oxford to do research for his Ph.D. under the supervision of the chemist Cyril Hinshelwood. In 1958, he moved to Cambridge to work with Francis Crick.

  Bullard, Belinda Cambridge undergraduate (b. 1936) at Girton College reading biochemistry; the daughter of the noted geophysicist Sir Edward Bullard, the scion of a rich Norwich brewing family.

  Calvin, Melvin University of California chemist (b. 1911) whose unraveling of key steps in the assimilation of carbon dioxide during photosynthesis led to his 1961 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

  Caspar, Don American biophysicist (b. 1930); after X-ray studies on tobacco mosaic virus for a Ph.D. at Yale, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech during 1955–6. The next year he went to the University of Cambridge to study spherical plant viruses.

  Chargaff, Erwin Czech-American biochemist (b. 1905) who studied in Vienna, in the U.S. at Yale, and also in Berlin. He returned to the U.S. and worked from 1935 at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. In the early 1950s, he found that the DNA bases adenine and thymine are present in equal numbers as are the bases guanine and cytosine.

  Crick, Francis Born near Northampton in 1916. After training as a physicist at University College London, he did scientific research for the British Admiralty during World War II. In 1947, he moved to Cambridge to learn biology and two years later joined the Medical Research Council Unit for the Study of the Molecular Structure of Biological Systems at the Cavendish Laboratory, where he became a Ph.D. student of Max Perutz. The unit later grew into the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (upon moving to a new site at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in 1962).

  Cullis, Ann Superb technician (b. 1931) for Max Perutz at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge during the mid-1950s.

  Delbrück, Max German theoretical physicist (b. 1906) who was associated for several years with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen before returning to B
erlin to work with Lisa Meitner at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry. He then became interested in genetics and moved in 1937 to Caltech, where he began working with bacterial viruses (phages). In 1941, he married Mary (“Manny”) Bruce, whose father was an engineer with Cyprus Mines. In 1969, he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Alfred Hershey and Salvador Luria.

  Demerec, Milislav Yugoslav geneticist (b. 1895) who studied for a Ph.D. in plant breeding at Cornell University. He moved to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1923 and became its Director in 1941.

  Donohue, Jerry A theoretical chemist (b. 1920) at Caltech with Linus Pauling, he and his wife Pat were at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge in 1952–3. There he occupied an office with Francis Crick, JDW, and Peter Pauling, giving the opinion in late February 1953 that guanine and thymine would have keto, not enol, conformations.

  Doty, Paul American physical chemist (b. 1920) whose research turned to DNA after he joined the Harvard Chemistry Department in 1948. In 1954, he married his Ph.D. student, Helga Boedtker.

  Dulbecco, Renato Qualified as a doctor in Italy (b. 1914); emigrated to the U.S. in 1947 to work with Salvador Luria at Indiana University on bacterial viruses. He moved to Caltech in 1949 to extend phage methodologies to animal viruses. He shared the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on DNA tumor viruses.

  Dunitz, Jack Scottish-born (1923) and -trained X-ray crystallographer who moved to Oxford as a postdoctoral fellow with Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in 1946. Afterwards he spent several years at Caltech where he met Alex Rich, later joining him at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 1957, he was appointed Professor of Chemical Crystallography in Zurich.

  Ephrussi, Boris Russian-born (1901), French-educated geneticist who was in the U.S. during World War II. After the war he returned to Paris as Professor of Genetics at the Sorbonne, focusing on the genetics of yeast. In 1949, he married his second wife, the American microbiologist Harriet Taylor, whom he met at the 1946 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium.