Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe (43 page)

Studies showed that an important part:
There have been many studies of positive affective reactions and of addictions. See, eg, Bozarth 1994; Fiorino, Coury, and Phillips 1997; Berridge 2003; and Wise 1998. A popular-science account is Nestler and Malenka 2004, and very accessible popular books on the experience of pleasure are Linden 2011 and Bloom 2010.

Neuroscientist and author Robert Burton suggested specifically:
Burton 2008, pp. 99–100, and p. 218.

is not associated with neural activity:
Motivated reasoning implies an emotion regulation. The studies suggest that motivated reasoning is qualitatively different from reasoning when people do not have a strong emotional stake in the results. An extensive review on motivated reasoning is Kunda 1990. The involvement of emotion in decision making is discussed, eg, in Bechara, Damasio, and Damasio 2000. A popular account is Coleman 1995. Westen et al. 2006 present the fMRI studies.

“The concordance of results”:
King 1893.

his objection to revising:
A good discussion of the importance of Kelvin’s estimate for the age of the Sun is in Stacey 2000.

In August 1920:
I discuss the problem of the generation of energy in stars in chapter 8.

“With respect to the lapse of time”:
Darwin inserted this sentence in the sixth edition; Peckham 1959, p. 728.

Chapter 6: Interpreter of Life

The lecture hall in the Kerckhoff:
Hager 1995, p. 374, gives a nice description of the event.

Watson was visiting the Swiss:
Watson was on his way back from Naples
to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he was a postdoctoral fellow, and he stopped in Geneva.

had made it even into the pages:
“Chemists Solve a Great Mystery: Protein Structure Is Determined,”
Life
, September 24, 1951, pp. 77–78.

Pauling started to think about proteins:
There are quite a few biographies of Pauling. I found the following particularly helpful: Hager 1995; Serafini 1989; Goertzel and Goertzel 1995; and Marinacci 1995. A number of books cover various aspects of Pauling’s work excellently. Among them I would like to mention Olby 1974; Lightman 2005; Judson 1996; and, of course, the fantastic website at Oregon State University:
http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections//coll/pauling
.

His first papers on the subject:
Pauling 1935; Pauling and Coryell 1936. Pauling and chemist Charles D. Coryell performed the experiment by suspending between the poles of a large magnet a tube of cow blood; Judson 1996, pp. 501–2, gives a good description.

Alfred Mirsky, a leading protein expert:
Pauling did not have much expertise with protein molecules, so he convinced Mirsky, who was at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, to come to Caltech for the 1935–36 year. (He also convinced the Rockefeller Institute’s president to allow Mirsky to leave!)

Mirsky and Pauling first proposed:
Mirsky and Pauling 1936. Some earlier work was done by Hsien Wu in 1931.

is composed of chains:
Very significantly for Pauling’s subsequent work, the authors noted that “this chain is folded into a uniquely defined configuration, in which it is held by hydrogen bonds.” Hydrogen bonds—where the hydrogen is held jointly by two atoms, effectively creating a bridge between them—were about to become Pauling’s trademark.

obtained by the physicist William Astbury:
Astbury 1936.

Pauling immersed himself in the work:
Pauling described his activities at the time in a dictation given in 1982. The transcription was published by Pauling’s assistant, Dorothy Munro; Pauling 1996.

Figure 11 shows a schematic drawing:
Pauling’s original piece of paper, on which he sketched the structure and then folded it, in 1948, was never discovered.

Pauling convinced Robert Corey:
Corey had considerable experience with X-ray studies of proteins already. Many years later, Pauling commented graciously that it may actually have been Corey who convinced him.

“In the spring of 1948”:
Pauling 1996. I should note that in an earlier account, Pauling 1955, Pauling says that he found only one of the two helices in Oxford, while the other was discovered by Herman Branson when Pauling returned to Caltech.

Pauling created a
helix: Olby 1974, p. 278, gives an excellent, if somewhat technical, description of the road to the alpha-helix.

“They have about five times”:
Pauling wrote to chemist and crystallographer Edward Hughes. Cited on
The Pauling Blog
website, under “An Era of Discovery in Protein Structure.”

Even during a discussion with the famous:
Pauling admitted in later interviews that he had been concerned that the Cavendish group might beat him to the punch in checking the models. Olby 1974, p. 281; Hager 1995, p. 330.

whether Branson could find:
According to Pauling 1955, Branson may have found only one of the two helices, after Pauling explained to him all the important constraints involved. In Pauling 1996, he gives the impression that he (Pauling) had discovered both helices in Oxford and that Branson later confirmed them.

“Polypeptide Chain Configurations”:
Bragg, Kendrew, and Perutz 1950.

The idea behind X-ray crystallography:
Good descriptions of the technique itself and its applications can be found, eg, in McPherson 2003. An outline containing less physics is Blow 2002.

“Proteins are built of long chains”:
Bragg, Kendrew, and Perutz 1950.

Bragg hammered nails:
Perutz 1987.

Pauling was always extremely competitive:
Alex Rich, Jack Dunitz, and Horace Freeland Judson all confirmed this fact in conversations with the author.

he and Corey sent a short note:
Pauling and Corey 1950.

that contained a detailed explanation:
Pauling, Corey, and Branson 1951. Somewhat sadly, Branson wrote a letter in 1984 to Pauling’s biographers Ted and Ben Goertzel, alleging that it was he, and not Pauling, who had “found two spiral structures which fit all the data.” In 1995 he added that Corey had nothing to do with the discovery (Goertzel and Goertzel 1995, pp. 95–98). These allegations are inconsistent with the recollections of a number of other scientists, who remembered Pauling’s models from Oxford, and also inconsistent with the fact that Branson had agreed to be third author on the paper. Branson himself did note that Pauling was “one of the impressive scientific intellects of our age who deserves the Nobel Prizes.”

that he thought that the word “spiral”:
Dunitz, in a conversation with the author on November 23, 2010.

“I was thunderstruck by Pauling”:
Perutz 1987.

He was one of the first scientists:
A concise summary of Pauling’s achievements is Dunitz 1991.

“To understand all these great biological”:
Pauling 1948a.

“I believe that as the methods”:
Pauling 1939, p. 265.

Even the space-filling colored models:
Francoeur 2001, p. 95. See also Nye 2001, p. 117.

“The Gregorian monk Mendel”:
Pauling 1948b.

“The detailed mechanism by means”:
Pauling 1948b.

Levene managed to distinguish:
eg, Levene and Bass 1931. Olby 1974, p. 73–96 gives a good description of the early work.

“The nucleic acids of the nucleus”:
Wilson 1925.

most geneticists still believed:
This notion, known as the “protein paradigm,” is described, eg, in Kay 1993.

Avery and his colleagues:
Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty 1944.

“So there’s the story”:
The letter was written on May 13, 1943. It is part of “The Oswald T. Avery Collection,” on the web under
Profiles in Science: National Library of Medicine
, at
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/CCBDVF
.

did not get the attention they deserved:
The fact that the paper was published in 1944, during the war, may have also contributed to its relatively low impact.

“To my father, nucleic acids”:
P. Pauling 1973.

an unusual paper by biochemist:
Ronwin 1951.

“in formulating a hypothetical structure”:
Pauling and Schomaker 1952a.

Ronwin retorted by pointing out:
He wrote to Pauling and directed him to a paper published by chemist Ludwig Anschütz in 1927, in which the latter suggested that phosphorus connected to five oxygen atoms in some structures.

Pauling and Schomaker had to withdraw:
Pauling and Schomaker 1952b.

Pauling heard that Maurice Wilkins:
Biochemist Gerald Oster wrote to Pauling about it on August 9, 1951. Oster interpreted Wilkins’s delay in publishing the images as a lack of interest on his part, but Wilkins was, in fact, working toward confirming the results with better tools.

Three separate events, all happening in 1951:
Although there are, of course, many accounts of the discovery of the structure of DNA, the autobiographical ones remain of special value, controversies notwithstanding. Watson 1980 (Norton Critical Edition) is particularly recommended. It includes, in addition to Watson’s original (and controversial) text, an excellent selection of reviews and analyses. Also highly recommended are Crick 1988 and Wilkins 2003. Unfortunately, Rosalind Franklin did not live long enough to write her own autobiography, but two biographies—Sayre 1975 and Maddox 2002—fill that gap beautifully. Most recently, Franklin’s sister, Jenifer Glynn, has written a wonderful memoir (Glynn 2012). Another interesting perspective on Franklin’s experiences as a woman in a male-dominated lab is Des Jardins 2010, pp. 180–95.

“molecular work on DNA in England”:
Watson 1980, p. 13.

“This means that as far as the experimental”:
Randall wrote to Franklin on December 4, 1950. He added: “I am not in this way suggesting that we should give up all thought of work on solutions, but we do feel that the work on fibres would be more immediately profitable and, perhaps,
fundamental.” The letter is reproduced, eg, in Olby 1974, p. 346, and in Maddox 2002, p. 114. See also Klug 1968a, b.

“no doubt the brightest person”:
Watson 1951, cited in Olby 1974, p. 354.

“The interest was that his [Watson’s] background”:
Olby 1974, p. 310.

“I have never seen Francis Crick”:
Watson 1980, p. 9.

“Jim was distinctly more outspoken”:
Crick 1988, p. 64.

“If either of us suggested”:
Crick 1988, p. 70.

“was determined to discover”:
Crick 1988, p. 64.

“it would not be fair to them”:
John Randall wrote to Pauling on August 28, 1951. He started by explaining that contrary to Gerald Oster’s interpretation, Wilkins was very interested in the DNA work: “I am sorry that Oster is rather misinformed about our intentions with regard to nucleic acid. Wilkins and others are busily engaged in working out the interpretation of the desoxyribosenucleic acid x-ray photographs.” Pauling responded politely on September 25, 1951, saying that he was sorry for having troubled Randall. All the relevant documents are on the Oregon State University website.

“One, thirty-five years old”:
Chargaff 1978, p. 101.

“So far as I could make out”:
Chargaff 1978, p. 101. Chargaff added (p. 102): “I told them all I knew. If they had heard before about pairing rules, they concealed it.”

“You would be eccentric”:
Crick in a recorded interview with Robert Olby; Olby 1974, p. 294.

he and Crick produced their first model:
A draft describing their approach was written by Crick (Olby 1974, p. 357). Crick states clearly in the draft that his first model with Watson was “stimulated by the results presented by the workers at King’s College, London, at a colloquium given on 21st November 1951.” He also refers explicitly to Pauling’s alpha-helix model.

the reported water content was completely wrong:
Franklin found eight molecules per nucleotide, while Watson reported four molecules per lattice point.

discovered some long-lost correspondence of Francis Crick:
Gann and Witkowski 2010.

“I am afraid the average vote”:
Gann and Witkowski 2010.

“we’ve all agreed that we must come”:
Gann and Witkowski 2010.