The Double Helix

Sometime in my junior year of undergrad, I borrowed this book ‘The Double Helix’ by James Watson from a good friend of mine. That was the time when I think I really got to appreciate some of the coursework we were doing back then, not to mention that I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a pretty well known piece of work and yes, its known for some good as well as bad reasons. So why am I talking about this today, here?

I saw an undergrad in the library reading this book. I got really excited seeing this as it reminded me how much of a delight it was to me reading this book. The person that I am, I couldn’t help but just start talking to him. Andy, freshman was only halfway through and I didn’t want to spoil it for him.

If you haven’t read this book yet, I strongly recommend it. The best part being even if you don’t have enough background to understand the science part of it, you definitely would enjoy reading it – simple writing, engaging, pacy at times, mellowed down at times and you also get vivid images of the people he worked with/interacted with and their personalities. Watson gives a first person account of various events – significant, trivial, competitive, all of them leading to his discovery of the DNA structure.

The most impressive feature of this book is that Watson does a very good job in explaining what the field was going through back then. Everybody knew finding the structure of DNA was the million dollar question, you had to play your cards really safe at scientific meetings and parties – who you talk to, what you tell them and what you get back from them. It was a real race.

There was a point when they stopped their work on DNA and Watson talks about other things in general like food, weather and life in Cambridge in general until Linus Pauling publishes his paper. That’s when Watson and Crick get back to DNA, starting off things exactly where they left once they realize that Pauling made an error. This is the latter part which gets really exciting. It keeps you on your toes literally!

For a person who is not very familiar with all the other people Watson mentions: The only caution you’d have to take is to perceive the pictures of the characters he paints with a grain of salt. And this is where the downside of this piece is - though Rosalind Franklin’s results lay the foundation for their discovery, you somehow never get the feeling that she is truly acknowledged. I learnt this pretty late but was taken aback to know that they don’t mention Franklin even in their Nobel speech.

That aside, it is amazing how Watson and Crick tried to come up with really simple explanations (and proved them right) for some real complicated evidences reinforcing the truth behind Occam’s Razor.