The fantastically rapid progress of scientific research in the past decades has had one important, as yet not fully appreciated, cultural by-product: there are now alive many scientists who can look back on their own early work, and that of their contemporaries, from a depth of historical perspective that for scientific disciplines flowering in earlier times had opened only after all the-witnesses of the formative stages were long dead. Nowadays, for instance, merely middleaged molecular biologists have available to them a retrospective view over their field whose range is comparable to that given to a lateeighteenth-century colleague of Joseph Priestley or Antoine Lavoisier who, by some miracle, would have been still active in chemical research and teaching in the I93OS, after atomic structure and the nature of the chemical bond had been fathomed. ...

Since its publication in 1968, The Double Helix has given over a million readers a rare and exciting look at one highly significant piece of scientific research--Watson and Crick's race to discover the molecular structure of the gene. In this Norton Critical Edition, Watson's lively and irreverent account is placed in historical perspective by Gunther Stent's introduction and by retrospective views from two major figures in the adventure, Francis Crick and Linus Pauling, and by Rosalind Franklin's last student, Aaron Klug.

Background materials include reproductions of the original scientific papers in which the double helical structure of DNA was first presented in 1953 and 1954. In the criticism section, which begins with "A Review of the Reviews" by Gunther Stent, other scientists and scholars reveal their own experience and views of Watson's story. There are reviews by Philip Morrison, F. X. S., Richard C. Lewontin, Mary Ellmann, Robert L. Sinsheimer, John Lear, Alex Comfort, Jacob Bronowski, Conrad H. Waddington, Robert K. Merton, Peter M.Medawar, and Andr6 Lwoff; and three letters to the editor of Science by Max F. Perutz, M. H. F. Wilkins, and James D. Watson.

Preface

Introduction

 Gunther S. Stent · The DNA Double Helix and the Rise of Molecular Biology

 Gunther S. Stent · The Author and Publication of The Double Helix

 Walter Sullivan · A Book That Couldn't Go to Harvard ( I968)

 The Text of The Double Helix (I968)

 Three Other Perspectives

 Francis Crick · The Double Helix: A Personal View (I974)

 Linus Pauling · Molecular Basis of Biological Specificity (1974)

 Aaron Klug · Rosalind Franklin and the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968)

The Reviews

 Gunther S. Stent · A Review of the Reviews

 Philip Morrison · The Human Factor in a Science First (1968)

 F. X. S. · Notes of a Not-Watson (I968)

 Richard C. Lewontin · "Honest Jim" Watson's Big Thriller about DNA (1968)

 Mary Ellmann · The Scientist Tells (I968)

 Robert L. Sinsheimer · The Double Helix (I968)

 John Lear · Heredity Transactions (I968)

 Alex Comfort · Two Cultures No More (I968)

 Jacob Bronowski · Honest Jim and the Tinker Toy Model (I968)

 Conrad H. Waddington · Riding High on aSpiral (I968)

 Max F. Perutz, M. H. F. Wilkins, and James D. Watson · Three Letters to the Editor of Science (1969)

 Robert K. Merton · Making It Scientifically (i968)

 Peter B. Medawar · Lucky Jim (I968)

 Andrd Lwoff · Truth, Truth, What Is Truth (About How the Structure of DNA Was Discovered)? (I968)

Original Papers

 J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick · A Structure for

Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (Nature, April 25, I9531

 J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick · Genetical

Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic

Acid (Nature, May 30, 1953)

 J. H. F. Wilkins, A. R. Stokes and H. R. Wilson

Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic

Acids (Nature, April 25, 1953)

 R. E. Franklin and R. G. Gosling · Molecular

Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate

(Nature, April 25, I953)

 J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick · The

Structure of DNA (Cold Spring Harbor Symposia

on Quantitative Biology, I953)

 F. H. C. Crick and J. D. Watson · The

Complementary Structure of Deoxyribonucleic

Acid (Proceedings o/the Royal Society, I954)

Index of Names