Avoid Boring People Part 5

In Berlin, I stayed for three nights at the guesthouse of the Freie Universitat, a postwar creation sited among the buildings that once housed many of Germany's best scientists before Hitler. Until the n.a.z.is came to power, Leo Szilard and Erwin Schrodinger had lectured on quantum theory there, with the voice of Einstein always figuring prominently in any discussion. Now of the past giants, only the n.o.bel Prize-winning biochemist Otto Warburg remained.

Soon to greet me was Kaky Gilbert, who the year before her Radcliffe graduation had a.s.sisted Alfred Tissieres and me with experiments on messenger RNA. As a student at the Freie Universitat, she would be showing me West Berlin. Unfortunately, she could not get permission to join me on my half day's visit to East Berlin, where I was surprised by the extraordinary h.e.l.lenic and a.s.syrian collections of the vast Pergamon Museum. Kaky did, however, accompany me to lunch at the residence of the head of the American mission in West Berlin. There I met the Prussian-acting Otto Warburg, whose legendary contribution to enzymology made him the most talked-about biochemist of our time. Though half Jewish, Warburg's longtime interest in cancer had led Hitler, always paranoid about contracting it, to let him continue working in Berlin throughout the war. He told me that my Harvard colleague George Wald was much too interested in philosophy, in contrast to his total lack of interest in it. Later, when Kaky and I dined at what proved an all too typical German restaurant, I was again in throat agony. So we did not stay out long, going back to Dahlem on the underground train running out to West Berlin's southwestern suburbs.

My next stop was Cologne, where Max and Manny Delbruck were spending the year helping its university establish an antiauthoritarian, American-style department in genetics. Though I could barely whisper, my throat again unbearably sore, Max nevertheless insisted upon my giving a scheduled speech, to the distress of many in the audience who surmised my discomfort. Fortunately, by the time I reached Geneva, my voice had returned, allowing me to go out to CERN, the big physics laboratory then led by Max's friend from Copenhagen days Vicky Weisskopf. Much of our talk was about Leo Szilard, who had just flown back from Geneva to New York. Szilard wanted Vicky and John to set up a CERN-like multinationally funded European molecular biology lab after the model of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Ideally Leo wanted the new lab to be in Geneva, but he would accept one on the Riviera. It would create an alternative intellectual home for him were the United States to tack right politically in response to even greater Soviet military threats.

Alfred and Virginia Tissieres had by then arrived from Paris to spend the holidays with their family in Lausanne. I went up to ski with them just before Christmas at Verbier, the new ski resort in Valais that Alfred's brother Rudolph had helped develop. Soon to arrive were my new friends from Stockholm, Helen Friberg and Kai Falkman, who planned to be there through the New Year. By then, however, I would be with the Mitchison family at their home in Scotland. Though London was covered by snow, green gra.s.s still surrounded the airport near Campbeltown where my small British European Airways puddle jumper landed on New Year's Eve morning. From there I was driven some twenty miles to their remote Carradale home, arriving very weary from the journey. After three days of brisk highland walks, I flew back to the States via Iceland.

Back at Harvard I found on my desk a letter from President Pusey acknowledging my letter about Princess Christina, which he had pa.s.sed on to Radcliffe's president, Mary Bunting. Appropriate application forms were dispatched to Sweden, and Christina promptly filled them out and asked her school, L'ecole Francaise, to send her academic records. News that she might be coming to Radcliffe first broke in the Boston Globe Boston Globe in mid-March, with an official announcement coming from the Royal Palace in early April. A day later, the in mid-March, with an official announcement coming from the Royal Palace in early April. A day later, the Crimson Crimson asked about my role in her admission, and my attempt at humor badly backfired. To my embarra.s.sment, the next day I read the words, "I didn't encourage her to come any more than I would encourage any pretty girl." I could only hope that that day's edition never got to Stockholm. In any case, I had further reason to believe I had made the right choice in moving to Harvard. Princesses don't go to Caltech. asked about my role in her admission, and my attempt at humor badly backfired. To my embarra.s.sment, the next day I read the words, "I didn't encourage her to come any more than I would encourage any pretty girl." I could only hope that that day's edition never got to Stockholm. In any case, I had further reason to believe I had made the right choice in moving to Harvard. Princesses don't go to Caltech.

Remembered Lessons 1. Buy, don't rent, a suit of tails Though you may believe you will have no further occasion to wear a suit of clothes befitting an orchestra conductor, winning a n.o.bel Prize is too singular an occasion for a hired suit of clothes. Furthermore, if your career stays at a high level, you may be invited to a subsequent n.o.bel week when one of your proteges wins. And keeping the outfit in your closet long after the festivities are over will serve to remind you what shape you once were.

2. Don't sign pet.i.tions that want your celebrity The moment your prize is announced, you are seen as fair game for pet.i.tioners of worthy causes in need of well-known signatories. In lending your name to such appeals, you often find yourself outside your expertise and expressing an opinion no more meaningful than, say, that of the average accountant. You trivialize your n.o.bel Prize and make future uses of your name less effective. Much better is to do real good as opposed to symbolic good.

3. Make the most of the year following announcement of your prize You have a lifetime ahead of you for being a past prize winner but only a yearlong window during which you are the celebrated scientist of the moment. While everybody respects n.o.bel laureates, this year's winner is always the most sought-after dinner guest. In Stockholm this year's honoree is treated like a movie star by the general population, who will ask even an otherwise obscure chemist for an autograph. As with the Miss America pageant, the announcement of the next winner will decisively mark the end of your reign as this year's science star.

4. Don't antic.i.p.ate a flirtatious Santa Lucia girl Much fuss is made after your arrival for n.o.bel Week about the pretty girl who will wake you up on Santa Lucia Day and sing the traditional song. Alas, she will not be alone, and very possibly she will be accompanied by one or more photographers expecting you to smile as you hear the Neopolitan tune that only sun-deprived Swedes could mistake for a carol. The moment her singing stops, she will be off to another laureate's room, leaving you several hours more of darkness to endure before the winter sun peeks above the horizon.

5. Expect to put on weight after Stockholm Ma.s.ses of invitations will come to you during your inevitable bout of post-Stockholm withdrawal syndrome. You may find yourself banqueting as a second profession, accepting invitations to places it never would have occurred to you to go before. I still remember well an excellent dinner in Houston at its once cla.s.sy Doctors' Club, before the Texas oil capital put itself on the map of high-powered biomedicai research. I remember glaring foolishly at a giant ice sculpture on the table, knowing it would not long honor my existence. When your hosts embarra.s.singly overstate your importance, it's easier to accept second helpings than to keep up conversation.

6. Avoid gatherings of more than two n.o.bel Prize winners All too often some well-intentioned person gathers together n.o.bel laureates to enhance an event promoting his or her university or city. The host does so convinced that these special guests will exude genius and incandescent or at least brilliantly eccentric personalities. The fact is that many years pa.s.s between the awarding of a prize and the work it acknowledges, so even recently awarded n.o.belists have likely seen better days. The honorarium, no matter how hefty, will not compensate you for the realization that you probably look and act as old and tired as the other laureates, whose conversation is boring you perhaps as much as yours is boring them. The best way to remain lively is to restrict your professional contact to young, not yet famous colleagues. Though they likely will beat you at tennis, they will also keep your brain moving.

7. Spend your prize money on a home A flashy car that costs more than it's worth is bound to give even your best friends reason to believe demi-celebrity has gone to your head and corrupted your values. Show them that the somewhat richer are not so different and you are still one of them. A bigger home will only put you in the same league as your university president, whom no one can reasonably envy.

11. MANNERS DEMANDED BY ACADEMIC INEPt.i.tUDE.

FROM the moment of my n.o.bel Prize, I took comfort in expecting a larger than ordinary annual salary raise. Over the past two years, I had twice received an annual increase of $1,000, so when I opened the small envelope coming on July 2 from University Hall I expected to see a $2,000 increase. Instead, the historian Franklin Ford, Bundy's successor as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, informed me that for my first time at Harvard I was to receive no raise at all. Instantly I went ballistic and let all my immediate friends know my outrage. Was an administrative blunder to blame for Harvard's failure to acknowledge the windfall of prestige that I had provided or did President Pusey want to send a message that celebrities had no place on his faculty and should consider going elsewhere?

Venting my wrath to student friends who wrote for the Crimson Crimson would be fun but likely to backfire and generate the official reply that Harvard never could adequately reward all the important ways the faculty enrich the academic milieu. Instead I talked to Harvard's best chemist, Bob Woodward, who was himself bound to receive the n.o.bel Prize soon. Attempting to calm me down, he told me he thought Harvard's failure to reward me reflected bad judgment on the part of our mediocre president as opposed to a deliberate insult. Bob offered to write Franklin Ford that if he were similarly treated, he would feel equally upset toward those who led Harvard. Later, Franklin Ford called me to his office to say that no insult had been intended-rather, priority had been given to rewarding other professors whose salaries were particularly low. The following year my salary went up by $2,000. My Spartan existence at 10 Appian Way, then as before, had allowed me routinely to spend less than I was earning. I thought about money only when I wanted to acquire for the walls of my apartment a painting or drawing beyond my means. Still, I would have been $1,000 poorer before taxes every subsequent year had I not spoken up about my displeasure. would be fun but likely to backfire and generate the official reply that Harvard never could adequately reward all the important ways the faculty enrich the academic milieu. Instead I talked to Harvard's best chemist, Bob Woodward, who was himself bound to receive the n.o.bel Prize soon. Attempting to calm me down, he told me he thought Harvard's failure to reward me reflected bad judgment on the part of our mediocre president as opposed to a deliberate insult. Bob offered to write Franklin Ford that if he were similarly treated, he would feel equally upset toward those who led Harvard. Later, Franklin Ford called me to his office to say that no insult had been intended-rather, priority had been given to rewarding other professors whose salaries were particularly low. The following year my salary went up by $2,000. My Spartan existence at 10 Appian Way, then as before, had allowed me routinely to spend less than I was earning. I thought about money only when I wanted to acquire for the walls of my apartment a painting or drawing beyond my means. Still, I would have been $1,000 poorer before taxes every subsequent year had I not spoken up about my displeasure.

The letters that bookended the year I got a n.o.bel Prize but no raise from Harvard More crucial to my morale than salary was how the science in my lab was going. Here I had cause for pleasure in the quality of my latest batch of graduate students-John Richardson, Ray Gesteland, Mario Capecchi, and Gary Gussin. With messenger RNA discovered, they knew how to proceed on their own. Underlying many of their successes was increasing use of phage RNA chains as templates for protein synthesis. To start us off, Ray Gesteland worked with Helga Doty to determine the molecular character of the RNA phage R17, whose RNA component of only some three thousand molecules most likely coded for only three to five different protein products.

The key surprise of the summer of 1963 was finding that RNA phages start their multiplication cycle through attachment to s.e.x-specific thin filaments (or pili) coming off the surfaces of male E. coli E. coli bacteria. Such filaments are absent from female bacteria. Such filaments are absent from female E. coli E. coli cells, explaining the until then mysterious fact that RNA phages grow only on male bacteria. Doing the electromicroscopy was Elizabeth Crawford, a summer visitor from Glasgow, with her molecular virologist husband, Lionel. Soon after their arrival, the three of us went up to the White Mountains, where we unintentionally aroused the ire of a nest-guarding goshawk that repeatedly dive-bombed us as we came down from a not undemanding walk up to the four-thousand-foot Carter's Dome. cells, explaining the until then mysterious fact that RNA phages grow only on male bacteria. Doing the electromicroscopy was Elizabeth Crawford, a summer visitor from Glasgow, with her molecular virologist husband, Lionel. Soon after their arrival, the three of us went up to the White Mountains, where we unintentionally aroused the ire of a nest-guarding goshawk that repeatedly dive-bombed us as we came down from a not undemanding walk up to the four-thousand-foot Carter's Dome.

Just before Labor Day, I flew to Geneva on my way to lecture at a NATO-sponsored molecular biology summer school at Ravello, Italy, across the bay from Naples. Among the other lecturers were to be Paul Doty, Fritz Lipmann, Jacques Monod, and Max Perutz. My high-ceilinged room in the Villa Cimbrone would have been perfect but for the nightly ravages of mosquitoes. Good fortune gave me as one of the sixty students the young German protein chemist Klaus Weber, then experimenting on the enzyme -galactosidase for his Ph.D. at Freiburg. Klaus had come to Ravello to broaden his knowledge of nucleic acids and by the two-week program's end he'd accepted my invitation to come the following year to work on RNA phages in my Harvard lab.

At completion of the summer session, Leo Szilard flew down from Geneva to help lead further discussions about establishing in Europe a meeting and course site similar to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. In Europe primarily to promote his latest scheme for preventing the nuclear annihilation of the planet, Leo came to Ravello on his way to a Pugwash disarmament meeting in Dubrovnik. Among those also briefly staying at the Villa Cimbrone were Ole Maaloe from Denmark, Sydney Brenner and John Kendrew from Cambridge, Ephraim Katchalski from Israel, and Jeffries Wyman, now living in Rome. By the end of the two-day meeting, widespread support existed for forming a European Laboratory of Fundamental Biology as well as a European Molecular Biology Organization of some one hundred to two hundred leading European biologists.

In a Rome art gallery on my way back, I lacked the courage to buy an almost affordable surrealist painting by an artist then unknown to me, Victor Brauner. During the following days, however, I acquired a small Paul Klee drawing from Gallery Moos, located below Jean Weigle's Geneva flat, and several Andre Derain drawings from Galerie Maeght in Paris. A week later, Princess Christina saw my new works of art at a small Sunday afternoon party I gave to help introduce her to Harvard life. Accompanying her was Antonia Johnson, the daughter of a leading Swedish industrial and shipping family, also to spend the coming year in the Radcliffe quad. To make the occasion more friendly, I invited some of my students, particularly those doing undergraduate research. But forty-five minutes later, when Christina and Antonia went off to another welcoming occasion, I remained unsure whether we would have reason to greet each other with more than a nod in pa.s.sing during the year ahead. Neither Christina's nor Antonia's course choices were likely to bring them to a Harvard science building. On the other hand, Christina was likely to be friendly with my Radcliffe friend and future tutee Nancy Haven Doe, who had gone to the Spence School. She came from the New York social scene, which Radcliffe's first princess was bound to sample.

In the meanwhile, I became increasingly immersed in Biology Department politics. Carroll Williams was no longer chairman, having been succeeded by the into-Harvard-born behavioral biologist Don Griffin, who specialized in bat navigation. After being a Harvard junior fellow, he quickly rose in the academic ranks at Cornell before being called back in 1956. Don had natural affinities with Harvard's organismal biologists, so it was not antic.i.p.ated that his first major goal as chairman would be to reduce the power of Harvard's separately funded biology museums, such as the Museum of Comparative Zoology and the Harvard Herbarium. Until this landmark turnabout, tenured museum scientists not only chose future museum curators but also had a say as to appointments to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

Back in June 1963, the tenured faculty, following Don's lead, voted that only professors supported by FAS monies would have automatic voting rights. At the same time, they opened up the possibility of key museum members having three-year terms on the Committee of Permanent Professors if so approved by two-thirds of the FAS-funded faculty. In this way, widely respected museum scientists such as the evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr would retain voting rights. Carroll Williams, who still held much political power in the department, later tried hard to have the decision reversed. If the museum deadbeats were removed from the department scene, Carroll would no longer be seen as a neutral party in the tension between old-fashioned organismal biologists and the new group of molecular biologists. Instead he would be perceived as the leader of a conservative biology caucus openly determined to stop DNA-centered work from ever dominating Harvard's biology. It remained unclear whether Carroll would prevail until the fall of 1963, when a letter came from Franklin Ford reaffirming the opinion that only faculty paid by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences should vote on their respective department appointments.

These sensible voting qualifications, however, did not adequately guarantee first-rate appointments to the biology faculty. At least one-third of the Biological Laboratories remained unchanged since its construction thirty years earlier. Particularly out of date were its teaching labs, library, animal quarters, and machine shops. Moreover, the practice of relying on the senior faculty's government grants to renovate the out-of-date labs of incoming junior faculty put the latter cohort in a servile role. New funding would have to materialize from the Faculty of Arts and Science, not just from federal grants, if Harvard was to hold its own with Stanford, Caltech, MIT, and Rockefeller. Keith Porter, Paul Levine, and I prepared a report on facilities, which Don Griffin pa.s.sed on to Franklin Ford. In it we outlined three possible scenarios for action. The first proposed extensive remodeling of the Biolabs; the second, a new five-story wing to the east; and the third, a ten-story building whose site demanded demolition of the historic brick Divinity School residence hall on Divinity Avenue, to the front of the Biological Laboratories.

A message soon came back from University Hall that no monies existed for construction of new Biology Department facilities. Any expansion of the biology faculty would have to occur within the preexisting confines of the Biological Laboratories. This rebuff had an unexpected positive consequence. Administrative approval would be fastest for scientists already in situ, whose s.p.a.ce requirements could be met by relatively inexpensive renovations of existing labs. Thus promoting Wally Gilbert to tenure was to prove much easier than we'd guessed the year before.

Wally still had a heavy physics teaching load and was supervising the Ph.D. theses of several graduate students. Only after the August 1961 Moscow Biochemistry Congress did Wally use most of his free time for experimentation in molecular biology. He first demonstrated that single poly U molecules serve as templates for several ribosomes simultaneously. Then he revealed the presence of transfer RNA molecules at the carboxyl ends of growing polypeptide chains. Currently he was showing that the attachment of streptomycin to ribosomes causes misreading of the genetic code. Even with these demonstrations of extraordinary talents as an experimentalist, I feared great difficulty getting him appointed to the biology faculty. In their eyes, Wally and I were too similar in our semiobjectionable objectives.

Luckily, Paul Doty soon orchestrated an arrangement to give Wally tenure, not as a member of the Biology Department but as a member of the Committee on Higher Degrees in Biophysics. Toward this end I wrote to Arthur Solomon, the long-reigning head of biophysics at Harvard, that Wally was in the same league, intellectually and experimentally, as Seymour Benzer or Sydney Brenner. Franklin Ford soon guaranteed funds to back the new tenured biophysics slot, and Wally's promotion breezed through the ad hoc committee early in April 1964.

The approval process for Wally occurred when I was in Paris to lecture at an April meeting marking the fiftieth anniversary of the French Biochemical Society. There, for the first time, I announced evidence for the existence of two ribosomal sites that specifically bind transfer RNA. One site I called A in view of its function to bind incoming amino acid transfer molecules in the presence of messenger RNA codons. The second site I called P since it holds the growing polypeptide chains to the ribosomes. In ways yet to be determined, growing polypeptide chains immediately moved from A sites to P sites after each new round of peptide bond formation. Toward the end of my lecture, I emphasized that we also expected to find along mRNA molecules signals for starting and stopping polypeptide synthesis. Our failure so far to find them may have reflected the fact that current cell-free systems for protein synthesis used only synthetic RNAs as templates. These contain no signals. Synthetic molecules likely worked as good templates only through mistakes in codon reading. Fearing afterward that my talk would be perceived as speculative, I was hugely relieved when Francois Jacob, never one for idle praise, called my lecture one of the best he had ever heard.

I was at the time very proud to be a senior fellow of Harvard's Society of Fellows. The main task of the eight senior fellows each year was to choose a similar number of junior fellows whose terms ran three years. We were also expected to dine each Monday with the junior fellows in the society's wood-paneled quarters in Eliot House. The society's reputation for exemplary minds was still deserved. The evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond and n.o.bel Prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffman were both selected in 1962.

It was much more fun, I found, to sit next to junior fellows rather than senior fellows; utterly painful was getting caught beside either the acerbic but shy critic Harry Levin or the overly polite cla.s.sicist Herbert Bloch. And though the philosopher Willard V. O. Quine may have been the brightest of all, his voice came alive only when talking about maps. One such evening per year would have been enough for me. Dinners became more agreeably animated after the economist Wa.s.sily Leontief took over as chairman in July 1964 and brought about the appointment as senior fellow of Boston's senior judge, the gossipy Charles Wyzanski, whose interests-intellectual as well as social- went far beyond the Harvard scene.

The historian Crane Brinton still presided over the society when I suggested inviting Princess Christina to one of our Monday night dinners. Soon I got the message that her royal presence might distract from its intellectual purposes. We had recently run into each other at the usually jammed coffee shop across from Widener Library. Antonia Johnson was with her, so the three of us shared a booth for lunch.

Much of our conversation centered on Antonia's current boyfriend in Philadelphia, who was doing biophysics research at the University of Pennsylvania. Several weeks later, I met Christina again at a waltz evening at the Parker House Hotel, where she discovered that I did not belong on a dance floor. I was the unlikely escort of the full-bodied blond bombsh.e.l.l Sheldon Ogilvy, whose college education in New York City had recently gone astray. Somehow she was on the guest list for this minor monthly Boston society dance. Exuding the happy insouciance of a Truman Capote heroine, Sheldon sipped Brandy Alexanders when we sat together at the Club Casablanca beneath the Brattle Theatre.

Early in May, Christina and I were both at a Sat.u.r.day night dance in Locust Valley, on Long Island's Gold Coast. It marked the twenty-first birthday of Deming Pratt, Nancy Doe's Radcliffe roommate. A marriage bond once connected Deming's branch of the oil-rich Pratt family to the royal Bernadottes of Sweden. Nancy told me I was to come, so I arranged to stay that night at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, only a fifteen-minute drive to the east. The scotch and soda I consumed over a pre-dance supper at the Piping Rock Club gave me the courage to once again subject Christina to my lack of rhythm. Much of the evening I gossiped with the Texas department store heiress Wendy Marcus and her escort, a New York Times New York Times Latin America correspondent. Leaving after most guests had already departed, I absentmind-edly drove off without turning on the headlights. Immediately I was pulled over by a local police officer, who mercifully only told me to stay on the shoulder until my head cleared. The times then were much more foolishly forgiving than today of intoxication behind the wheel. Later I shuddered at the thought of the publicity that would have ensued had the policeman been more hard-nosed and done his duty to haul me in. Latin America correspondent. Leaving after most guests had already departed, I absentmind-edly drove off without turning on the headlights. Immediately I was pulled over by a local police officer, who mercifully only told me to stay on the shoulder until my head cleared. The times then were much more foolishly forgiving than today of intoxication behind the wheel. Later I shuddered at the thought of the publicity that would have ensued had the policeman been more hard-nosed and done his duty to haul me in.

The arrival of summer left Sheldon Ogilvy no reason to remain in Cambridge and she became ensconced at 336 Riverside Drive in New York City. Though no relation of the advertising whiz David Ogilvy, she got hired as the receptionist at Ogilvy and Mather's offices on Madison Avenue. I popped in to see her when I came down late in July for the 1964 International Biochemical Congress at the Hilton Hotel. Francis Crick was there to give one of the congress's keynote speeches. In my talk, I slipped in a slide showing a photo from the n.o.bel Prize dinner of Francis apparently peering inappropriately at Princess Desiree. Later, to make amends, I introduced Francis to Sheldon at a lighthearted dinner at the piano bar restaurant on the roof of the St. Regis. The next day Francis telephoned her at work to get her address and phone number for his next trip to the States. I only learned this in early December, when Sheldon wrote telling me that she would be having lunch with Francis again on his way back to England, and that she first felt a bit odd in accepting his attention and then a bit odd about being so scrupulous, given that the three of us had had so much fun together at the St. Regis.

No longer a receptionist, Sheldon was on to teaching foxtrots to what she called "little WASP girls" in Westchester so they would look presentable when they suddenly blossomed into debutantes. In her note, she expressed regret at backing out with virtually no notice from an October weekend with me at Cold Spring Harbor. The previous night's activities, she explained, had left her too black and blue to appear in public. Discretion kept me from asking for details. Less athletically, she was immersed in Virginia Woolf and wanted my help to win readmission to Barnard and dispel the cloud hanging over her since her abrupt withdrawal. Although I could see that her cause would benefit from a supportive letter, it was not all clear to me what I could credibly write.

Over the fall of 1964, a growing faculty consensus, strongly encouraged by Franklin Ford, emerged for placing the long-running undergraduate concentration in biochemical sciences under the jurisdiction of the Committee for Higher Degrees in Biochemistry. Most biochemical science majors historically aimed for medical school, and many members of its Board of Tutors, correspondingly, had medical school affiliations. In 1958, the microbiologist Alvin Pappenheimer came to Harvard from New York University Medical School to become the board's head tutor, replacing the veteran John Edsall. Now Pap wanted to resign since he had just been appointed master of Dunster House.

The proposed merger would allow the junior faculty members to rotate in and out of the head tutor position without the dean's having to create a tenure slot for each new appointee.

To win support from those who wanted a separate biochemistry department created immediately, Franklin Ford gave permission to start a search for a senior biochemist or molecular biologist, a boon to these disciplines. Equally important, he and President Pusey promised a new science building to be sited between the Converse Memorial Lab and the Biological Laboratories. The official formation of the new Committee on Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BMB) was announced at the February 1965 meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Its new chairman was to be John Edsall, signifying to all a seriousness of commitment.

Widespread enthusiasm then existed for bringing the Canadian-trained M.D. David Hubel, who was a.s.sociate professor of neurophysiology at Harvard's Medical School, to the Biology Department with tenure. Current experiments by Hubel and his Swedish-born collaborator Torsten Wiesel were radically advancing knowledge of how the visual cortex is organized. To allow their collaboration to continue, Don Griffin proposed giving Wiesel an appointment as a senior research a.s.sociate in biology. Especially impressed by their accomplishments was Francis Crick, who now used his role as a nonresident fellow of the Salk Inst.i.tute to meet frequently with Hubel and Wiesel in La Jolla. Attracting Hubel and Wiesel would be a ma.s.sive step forward for the Biolabs, stamping it indelibly as a place of high-level biology. Speculation already existed that they were bound to receive a joint n.o.bel Prize. Common sense thus dictated that Wiesel also be offered a tenured position. But we were told that the dean could not now create a new tenured slot for him, especially since he was said to have no interest in teaching undergraduates.

I soon had an opportunity to become better acquainted with Hubel and Wiesel through a late winter visit to the Salk Inst.i.tute in La Jolla. The occasion for coming to the San Diego region was a three-day gathering on the role of genes in the immune response, held at Warner Hot Springs near Palomar Mountain and its big telescope. There Norbert Hilschmann from Lyman Craig's lab at Rockefeller University put up a slide showing amino acid sequences from antibody-like Bence-Jones proteins found in victims of multiple myeloma. He took care not to let this slide stay on the screen long enough for its data to be copied down by his rival at Rockefeller, Gerry Edelman, then also in the audience. Enraged by this act of bad form, Max Delbruck rose and denounced Hilschmann. But those of us who knew Gerry well could see Hilschmann was in a no-win situation.

In deciding at the last moment to extend my California visit for an additional week, I would be violating a long-standing Arts and Sciences rule that during term the president and fellows must approve all visits of more than a week away from Harvard. But I was not scheduled for lectures during the time in question, and asking at the last moment for approval might delay my departure to Warner Hot Springs. So I decided simply to tell Don Griffin that I was to be away for some two weeks. The thought never occurred to me that he would see the need to tell Franklin Ford. But this he did, and I only learned of it at the Salk Inst.i.tute in the middle of watching Hubel and Wiesel in action. They were among the first to know of my instant rage when I got a phone call from Don telling me that President Pusey wanted me immediately to return to Harvard. I was being treated like an AWOL soldier. Deeply upset, I told Don that while Pusey might get satisfaction from humiliating me, he was giving Hubel reason to wonder why he should consider giving up Harvard Medical School, where he could travel as he saw fit, to move to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and be governed by rules more befitting teenagers than serious scientists. Don phoned the next morning telling me I could stay. Until then, only the compound curse "F Harvard and f Pusey" went through my brain, and I vocalized it openly many times as the day turned to night.

Upon my return to Harvard, Paul Doty gave me the dope that Kenneth Galbraith had also had a run-in with Pusey over traveling during term. Denied a request to spend a winter without teaching commitments skiing in Gstaad, Ken obtained a doctor's note that the break was medically necessary to prevent undue stress on his circulatory system. Not wanting to risk a fight that Ken might make public, Pusey caved in. The Harvard Corporation was still embarra.s.sed about almost having blackballed Ken after World War II for supposed left-wing economics. I feared the line Pusey had taken with me was his way of rea.s.serting authority over his faculty. Needless to say, I was apprehensive on receiving Franklin Ford's July 1 note concerning my salary for the coming year. To my relief, I got a $1,000 increase.

Three months earlier, I had been even more gratified to read another letter from Ford stating that Mr. Pusey and the Corporation wanted to reconsider aspects of policies concerning travel and salaries. They wanted the matter studied over the next year by a faculty committee whose work would be highly confidential. Would I consider chairing the committee, despite my plan to be away for much of the next year? I felt immensely vindicated and phoned Paul Doty. To my surprise, he did not seem happily surprised at the Corporation's turnabout. It was only several hours later, on my way to Paul's house, that I looked again at Ford's letter and suddenly noted it was dated April 1, 1965. Meeting his friend Dorothy Zinberg at the gate, I saw clearly that we were victims of the same hoax. I should have known that Harvard never would have changed course so dramatically, but I couldn't for the life of me work out how Paul had obtained the University Hall stationery.

At no time did my run-in with President Pusey make me want to leave Harvard. Nowhere else was I likely to get such a caliber of graduate students. Their latest triumphs involved besting two labs at Rockefeller University in understanding key features of protein synthesis. For more than a year, Norton Zinder's Rockefeller group and my RNA phage group had raced each other to find out how so-called nonsense bacterial suppressor strains misread mutant chain-terminating signals to generate biologically active polypeptide chains. By late spring Gary Gussin and Mario Capecchi wrote up for publication in Science Science that mutant tRNA molecules read "nonsense" signals as "sense" signals, thus winning the race. that mutant tRNA molecules read "nonsense" signals as "sense" signals, thus winning the race.

Less than six months later, Capecchi and Jerry Adams showed that formyl methionine tRNA molecules initiate the synthesis of bacterial protein chains. Earlier I visited Rockefeller University to see whether Fritz Lipmann's big lab was following up the discovery of f-met-tRNA, made some months before in Denmark. Its existence might explain why so many bacterial proteins had methionine as their terminal amino acids. But Fritz was not thinking along these lines, and I left New York City knowing Jerry Adams would have no compet.i.tion studying how protein synthesis starts. Soon Jerry discovered how to radioactively label f-met-tRNA molecules, allowing him and Mario to label the formyl groups at the ends of RNA phage proteins made in vitro. Their experimental results were sent off to the Proceedings of the National Academy Proceedings of the National Academy just before I flew to London to spend December 1965 in Cambridge. just before I flew to London to spend December 1965 in Cambridge.

By then, virtually everybody in the Biological Laboratories knew that their best interests would be served if the BMB Committee rapidly converted into a genuine department. Uncertainty about being allocated s.p.a.ce was causing qualms for prospective faculty recruits. Keith Porter had taken over as chairman after Don Griffin's three-year stint. Only months before the changeover Griffin had unexpectedly announced that he was resigning to move to Rockefeller University and its field station in Millbrook, some fifty miles north of New York City. In a panic, the Biology Department offered his tenured slot to Edwin Furshpan, who studied invertebrate synapses at Harvard Medical School in a lab nearby that of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. Behind this hurried offer were hopes that it would make David Hubel more inclined to move to Cambridge.

This ploy, however, didn't work. David, Torsten, and Ed eventually decided to remain at Harvard Medical School. The Pappenheimer microbiology tenure slot was also up for grabs, since Boris Magasanik had turned it down more than a year before to remain a member of the MIT biology department, whose future he saw no reason to question. Now the department was prepared to change tracks and offer the position to Renato Dulbecco, whose research on DNA tumor viruses was zooming forward. No one, however, was surprised when Renato declined it, knowing his research facilities in the soon-to-be-completed Salk Inst.i.tute would be incomparably better than Harvard could offer in the Biolabs.

Wanting to pull off at least one coup of tenure acceptance, Keith Porter enthused about recruiting the circadian rhythm expert Woody Hastings, from Illinois. Long a fixture of the Woods Hole summer scene, Woody was liked by all, and I went along in voting for his appointment though I saw his science as having little potential to make lasting ripples. As I was soon to leave the Biology Department to take on BMB stripes, I saw only ill will coming of opposing Woody on intellectual grounds. If the appointment was to be blocked, the move would have to occur at the ad hoc committee level. But the committee was composed of academics who thought biology teaching had to remain diverse, and the appointment went through.

At the January n, 1966, meeting when the Biology Department recommended the Hastings appointment, it also made Wally Gilbert a member, opening the way for him to obtain s.p.a.ce of his own that I a.s.sumed would be adjacent to mine. There was also much discussion about John Edsall's memorandum to Franklin Ford urging the speedy creation of a Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Keith said he would form a three-person committee to draft a statement that everyone antic.i.p.ated would express the Biology Department's support for the split. A similar discussion occurred in the Chemistry Department, which likewise accepted the split, though it expressed regret they would lose from their ranks important figures such as Paul Doty. Believing the matter to be sufficiently important for outside a.n.a.lysis, Franklin Ford took John Edsall's specific proposals before a specially convened ad hoc committee that requested more precise details before ruling in favor of a subsequent revised proposal. Officially the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology would come into existence on February 1, 1967, with its offices on Divinity Avenue in the large wooden house where the famed historian Arthur Schlesinger had been raised.

The impending creation of the BMB, however, did not put my mind at rest. While spending the spring in Alfred Tissieres's lab in Geneva, I got wind that the biology faculty was proposing to move the geneticist Paul Levine onto the third floor, adjacent to my lab. Giving Paul this s.p.a.ce would not only prevent Wally Gilbert from getting it but also limit the possibility of locating junior faculty members near Wally and me. As Dulbecco had just declined our offer, I wrote to Keith saying that if new blood was to enter the Biolabs, it would have to come through the junior ranks.

In my office in 1967 The thought of their making Paul my neighbor, and effectively forcing Wally to move to the fourth floor, made my blood boil, and I told Porter so. Ever since Wally had gained tenure, our students had two mentors simultaneously-a unique research experience. Spirited conversations over coffee, lunch, and tea would occur much less frequently with our two groups on two different floors. Over the summer, talk of Levine's relocation stopped, leading me to hope that I had made enough of a stink to scotch it. But the plan was resurrected in September with Geoffrey Pollitt, the Biolabs' senior administrator, arguing that it would free up ten units of precious lab s.p.a.ce. In my mind the same objective could be achieved by reducing Levine's domain, which now equaled mine in square footage, though with only half the personnel. Not until mid-December did Keith officially backtrack, offering Wally the same office and research s.p.a.ce that in May he had proposed giving to Paul Levine.

Our new department was coming into existence not a moment too soon.

Remembered Lessons 1. Success should command a premium Whether my Biology Department enemies helped orchestrate Harvard's failure to acknowledge my n.o.bel Prize with a respectful salary increase, I will never know. I had added visibly to Harvard's image capital in a way that by my lights merited more than the president's pro forma one-sentence congratulatory letter. Much bunk is peddled about money not being a prime motive of the academic. This does not, however, change the fact that salary is the means by which any employer expresses how much he values you; whether you need the cash or not, make sure your salary reflects your status.

2. Channel rage through intermediaries Feelings of intense anger against university administrators are best conveyed through friends who share your feelings of mistreatment. Directly confronting your dean all too easily leads to words that burn bridges within your inst.i.tution. It never makes sense to be seen as a hothead unable to see another person's point of view.

3. Be prepared to resign over inadequate s.p.a.ce Your colleagues won't know whether your raise is a thousand dollars more or less than theirs, but everyone can see what sort of work s.p.a.ce you are a.s.signed. It affects what you can accomplish and how you are perceived. a.s.signing equal s.p.a.ce to all equally ranked academics sounds fair but leads to inefficiencies. Individuals at different stages of their career have different needs but giving or taking away s.p.a.ce accordingly leads to complaints of favoritism, and so political rather than rational allocation is the norm. Yet if you find yourself denied the s.p.a.ce you need to exploit a bright new idea or experimental breakthrough, you may be overtaken by compet.i.tion elsewhere. Losing an important s.p.a.ce request means either your talents are not recognized or your department is relatively indifferent to whether you stay or go. If you don't make a credible threat to resign, you will never know where you stand. Such moments are inherently stressful and never to be taken lightly. But in the Darwinian world of an academic department, if you don't create such crises, limited resources will surely go to gutsier colleagues.

4. Have friends close to those who rule When Charlie Wyzanski learned over a Society of Fellows dinner that I had been summarily called back to Harvard while on a visit to California, he wrote to his friend at the Harvard Corporation, Thomas Lamont. In a private letter, Charlie expressed how asinine Harvard would have looked if the matter had leaked to Boston newspapers. And a word to the wise was sufficient.

5. Never offer tenure to pract.i.tioners of dying disciplines In the 1960s, the Harvard Biology Department continued to make tenured appointments in fields such as development and plant biology, tired games not likely to rebound soon. Undergraduate teaching needs were invariably cited for such appointments. MIT, on the other hand, practiced attrition with these dying disciplines, leaving the teaching of them to untenured faculty. Consequently, by the mid-1970s, our academic rival began moving from behind to far ahead of Harvard in biology, with predictable effects on the quality of graduate students in both places.

6. Become the chairman Most top university scientists disdain duties that take time from research. They see administration as a bore, and everyone wants someone else to be the department chairman. As a result of shirking responsibility, most science departments are less exciting places than they should be. The straw that stirs the drink counts for a lot. Dull chairmen make foolish choices when they a.s.sign the teaching of important courses and the use of precious department s.p.a.ce and facilities. The wrong faculty members handle departmental seminars and keep the library buying journals that no one reads. Departmental meetings have no purpose droning on without addressing vital issues until there is no oxygen left in the room. Being chairman need not consume more than 10 percent of an intelligent professor's time, possibly less than he or she might waste griping about bad decisions made by others.

7. Ask the dean only for what he can give Both saying and hearing no are unpleasant experiences, making the denier look ungenerous and the denied clueless or impotent. Everyone has a wish list, but when you ask the dean for something, make sure you have thought through how he could reasonably give it without taking a costly political hit. It is quite another matter, however, to ask the dean to pet.i.tion the university for a change of policy you want. Although a negative reply is always annoying, here neither you nor the dean looks bad personally, and you will at least gain insight into the university's finances and priorities.

12. MANNERS BEHIND READABLE BOOKS.

THE DOUBLE HELIX, the story of how Francis and I found the structure of DNA, was published in February 1968-fifteen years after the discovery. That the tale's many unexpected twists should be revealed to the general public was long on my mind, but how to write them up did not crystallize until a spring 1962 dinner in New York City. There Francis and I were being honored with the Research Corporation Prize. Francis could not be there since he was in Seattle delivering three long-scheduled public lectures at the University of Washington. Abby Rockefeller invited me to spend the night at her parents' home, where I admired her father's large Derain fauve painting of the Thames and beheld her family's porcelain with less appreciation. I walked from East Sixty-fifth Street to the Amba.s.sador Hotel on Park Avenue, then the venue of many such ceremonial affairs. On the dais I was next to Columbia University's literary polymath Jacques Barzun, known to me since my adolescence through his regular appearances on the CBS radio network.

Stimulated by Barzun's conversation, I used my after-dinner acceptance speech to tell the story of our discovery as a very human drama also featuring Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, Erwin Chargaff, and Linus Pauling. My unexpected candor elicited much laughter and was later praised for allowing the audience to feel like insiders in one of science's big moments. Feeling jubilant as I walked back along Lexington Avenue to the Rockefeller home, I saw in my future the writing of what Truman Capote would later call the "nonfiction novel." But since I was scheduled almost immediately to return to England to my mini-sabbatical at Churchill College, Cambridge, I could not see starting to write until my return to Harvard.

Abby Rockefeller

With Cynthia Johnson in Radcliffe Yard

Wally Gilbert and I ride the rhino outside the Harvard Biolabs with Barbara Riddle and blue-eyed Pat Collinge.

In London I initially hoped to use my half of the Research Corporation Prize to commission Francis Bacon to paint Francis Crick; I had recently seen one of Bacon's small portraits in Geneva, and it long lingered in my mind. But the Marlborough Gallery let me know that the Irish-born Bacon painted only close acquaintances. The fact that Francis and Odile had spotted the artist the previous summer in Tangier would not suffice. An hour later, I walked out onto Albemarle Street the contented possessor of one of nine copies of Henry Moore's bronze Head of a Warrior. Head of a Warrior.

The first chapter of what later came to be called The Double Helix The Double Helix was written in Albert and Marta Szent-Gyorgyi's house on Cape Cod. The summer was coming to an end and my Radcliffe summer a.s.sistant, Pat Collinge, was about to join her Harvard boyfriend, Jake, at work on a novel farther out on the Cape. Since the start of summer, Pat's blue eyes and urchin dress made her seem the perfect muse to draw out of me the first pages of my DNA story without apparent effort. Happily, she agreed to be driven down to the Cape in my open MG TF to spend a morning as my typist at Woods Hole before going on to Wellfleet. But I had writer's block for several hours before the words came to me: "I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood." More than half the first chapter was typed out before her boyfriend showed up, leaving me wistfully contemplating how I would finish the rest of the chapter without the encouragement of her blue eyes. It wasn't so easy, and only once back at Harvard would I finish the final paragraphs, whereupon my secretary typed out a complete first chapter. was written in Albert and Marta Szent-Gyorgyi's house on Cape Cod. The summer was coming to an end and my Radcliffe summer a.s.sistant, Pat Collinge, was about to join her Harvard boyfriend, Jake, at work on a novel farther out on the Cape. Since the start of summer, Pat's blue eyes and urchin dress made her seem the perfect muse to draw out of me the first pages of my DNA story without apparent effort. Happily, she agreed to be driven down to the Cape in my open MG TF to spend a morning as my typist at Woods Hole before going on to Wellfleet. But I had writer's block for several hours before the words came to me: "I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood." More than half the first chapter was typed out before her boyfriend showed up, leaving me wistfully contemplating how I would finish the rest of the chapter without the encouragement of her blue eyes. It wasn't so easy, and only once back at Harvard would I finish the final paragraphs, whereupon my secretary typed out a complete first chapter.

Events connected to my fall n.o.bel Prize conspired with the school year to keep me from writing any more until the following summer. It was then I spotted the engagingly pretty Radcliffe senior Cynthia Johnson, eating lunch under the big elm tree in front of the Biolabs. She was with our department's best-looking a.s.sistant professor, John Dowling, under whom she was doing summer research in George Wald's vision lab. The next day I joined them for lunch and soon afterward was playing tennis with Cynthia on the Radcliffe courts. Too soon I learned that she had a steady boyfriend, Malcolm MacKay, who, having just graduated from Princeton, was in Europe before starting Harvard Law School in the fall. Until that time, however, we took day trips together, once to the beach at Nahant, where, scarily, I first noticed that ceremonial overeating had given me a slight belly, the first fat I'd ever observed in my midsection. Later, on Martha's Vineyard, I stayed several weekends at Cynthia's family home in Edgartown, learning not only that her artist mother had drawn the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor but that her grandmother was a close friend of Emily Post, whose book on manners precipitated the decline of the WASP ascendancy in America. Thinking that my being a writer as well as a laureate might offer romance enough to dislodge Malcolm from Cynthia's heart, I spent the last two weeks of August writing two more chapters. But when the fall came and Cynthia brought Malcolm to my flat for my approval, I knew I could not compete with his sailboats.

By then my free moments were devoted to completing six short chapters on the replication of living molecules for a book to emerge in time for my forthcoming January lectures to talented high school students in Australia. George Gamow had lectured to this Sydney summer school the year before and highly recommended it as an excuse for being in the warm sun during January. I likewise looked forward to avoiding the East Coast doldrums over the Christmas/New Year holidays and so accepted the necessity of writing up simplified versions of my Biology 2 lectures.

One muggy August evening, on the plain wooden desk of my Appian Way flat, I wrote out, "It is very easy to consider man unique among living organisms. Great civilizations have developed and changed our world's environments in ways inconceivable for any other form of life. There has thus always been a tendency to think that something special differentiates man from everything else. These beliefs often find expression in man's religions that try to give an origin to our existence and in so doing to provide workable rules for conducting our lives. Just as every human life begins at a fixed time, it was natural to think that man did not always exist but that there was a moment of creation perhaps occurring at the same time for man and all other forms of life. These views, however, were first seriously questioned just over 100 years ago when Darwin and Wallace proposed their theories of evolution based on selection of the most fit."

The remainder of this introductory chapter came easily over the next several days, leaving me confident of getting the remaining five pieces done by the end of October. In that case, the book would be ready at the start of the Australian summer school. But pressing tasks for the President's Science Advisory Committee let me send off only three chapters ("Introduction," "A Chemist's View of the Living Cell," "The Concept of Template Surfaces"). Later John F. Kennedy's death in Dallas and my father's stroke soon after kept me from writing up the last three lectures. To my relief, my father's weakness on one side was not permanent, and by the time I took him down to Washington to be with my sister over the winter, he could walk to and from Harvard Square using a cane.

Despite a brief stopover in Fiji, I felt and looked haggard when I arrived in Sydney just after New Year's. The short brown beard that I had grown in September while lecturing in Ravello led a Sydney newspaper article to describe me as "haunted and Mephistophelean" and "as introverted as his host the physicist Harry Messel was extroverted." It went on to characterize me as difficult to entertain, a portrayal reflecting several dinner parties given for me by senior academics, not one graced by the face of a pretty girl. In desperation I suggested an evening of nightclubbing only to find that in prudish Sydney chorus girls still danced fully clothed.

My life improved dramatically when a reporter for the Mirror Mirror arranged for me to be led around the Paddington art scene by the young painter and critic Robert Hughes. In the Rudy Komen Gallery, I bought the large blue painting arranged for me to be led around the Paddington art scene by the young painter and critic Robert Hughes. In the Rudy Komen Gallery, I bought the large blue painting Kings Cross Woman Kings Cross Woman by the former boxer Robert d.i.c.kerson and a de Kooning-like green-faced woman by the equally talented Jon Molvig. Then we popped into the Kellman Gallery, where I acquired a life-size wooden man from the Sepie River peoples of Papua New Guinea. Its painted Dubuffet-like face later sat across from me at my Biolabs desk. At last in high spirits, I looked forward to a second day of gallery hopping, but Hughes pulled out, making me suspect that women did not make him tick, a notion since copiously disproved. by the former boxer Robert d.i.c.kerson and a de Kooning-like green-faced woman by the equally talented Jon Molvig. Then we popped into the Kellman Gallery, where I acquired a life-size wooden man from the Sepie River peoples of Papua New Guinea. Its painted Dubuffet-like face later sat across from me at my Biolabs desk. At last in high spirits, I looked forward to a second day of gallery hopping, but Hughes pulled out, making me suspect that women did not make him tick, a notion since copiously disproved.

Even before my arrival back at Harvard, I feared my Australian lectures and their written versions were for college, not high school, students and that audiences would get lost. My three completed chapters, I decided, would work better as the start of a little college-level text on how DNA provides the information that enables cellular existence. A chance meeting at the Wursthaus in Harvard Square led me to learn that MIT's molecular biologist, Cyrus Levinthal, was advising the new science textbook company W. A. Benjamin. The firm was eager to expand its initial physics and chemistry list to encompa.s.s biochemistry and molecular biology. Less than a week later, its main editor, the young Canadian Neil Patterson, came to my office to make me a Benjamin author, as he had earlier the uber-physicist Murray Gell-Mann.

Soon after, I was in W. A. Benjamin's grubby New York City offices, above a bowling alley on Upper Broadway. My discomfort abated when I was told they would soon move to 2 Park Avenue, below Grand Central Station. Liking the way in which Neil Patterson sought out books by clever young scientists, I signed a contract that gave me a $1,000 advance for a 125-page book to be completed late in the year. In addition, I was offered options to buy five thousand shares of Benjamin stock; there seemed reason to hope the stock price would rise as new books rolled out. By then I had given my prospective book the t.i.tle The Molecular Biology of the Gene (MBG). The Molecular Biology of the Gene (MBG). I was first tempted to call it I was first tempted to call it This Is Life, This Is Life, a t.i.tular rejoinder to Erwin Schrodinger's a t.i.tular rejoinder to Erwin Schrodinger's What Is Life? What Is Life? On reflection, however, that would have been promising more than I could deliver. On reflection, however, that would have been promising more than I could deliver.

In writing my new chapters, I used boldface sentences to summarize the main idea conveyed by paragraphs below it (e.g., "Molecules are restrictively sticky;" "Enzymes cannot be used to order amino acids in proteins;" "Template interactions are based on weak bonds over short distances"). I hit upon "concept heads" as a teaching device when writing the chapter "A Chemist's Look at the Living Cell" before going off to Australia. They naturally emerged from lists of ideas I prepared in outlining what topics each chapter should include. Almost from the start I saw the need to expand upon my Australian chapters, coming up with snappy concept heads such as "The 25-year loneliness of the protein crystallographer."

In the right-hand corner of my office, the Sepie River wood carving I bought shortly after winning the n.o.bel Prize supervises my labors.

Equally important to the final readability of MBG MBG was the artwork done by the young Keith Roberts, about to begin his university studies. Early in 1964, Keith had come from England to work as a temporary lab technician prior to reading botany at Cambridge. When I happened to ask his opinion of my first draft chapters, he revealed that he had almost chosen to study art over science, and volunteered to do the necessary ill.u.s.trations. As my ma.n.u.script steadily grew in length, Keith's preoccupation with drawing became full-time, and he continued to draw for me after commencing his freshman year. was the artwork done by the young Keith Roberts, about to begin his university studies. Early in 1964, Keith had come from England to work as a temporary lab technician prior to reading botany at Cambridge. When I happened to ask his opinion of my first draft chapters, he revealed that he had almost chosen to study art over science, and volunteered to do the necessary ill.u.s.trations. As my ma.n.u.script steadily grew in length, Keith's preoccupation with drawing became full-time, and he continued to draw for me after commencing his freshman year.

At that time, Benjamin was using two-color printing and professional artists. Here I was lucky to have the New York painter Bill Prokus help me transfer Keith's artistic ideas into fixed artwork. Bill then had a studio on Twenty-third Street in Chelsea, where in addition to his own work he did commercial artwork for Benjamin. To speed Bill along, I began coming down regularly to New York City and staying at the Plaza, where the inside rooms never cost more than $20. Even so, Bob Worth, the steel heir who was Benjamin's financial officer, called on me to stop such visits, having read an unfavorable opinion of my then almost finished ma.n.u.script. Neil Patterson had sent it to the cell biologist Bob Allen at Dartmouth, who found it unsuitable for his students. Fortunately, Neil prevailed over Bob, and I did not have to stay at the dingy Chelsea Hotel, sited across from Bill Prokus's studio.

All my chapter drafts were greatly improved in editing done by the Radcliffe senior Dolly Garter. She had taken George Wald's first-year general-education biology course and so was exposed to the DNA way of thinking. That she was an English major interested in writing was a big plus, and she was able to change many a turgid phrase into freer-flowing language. My challenge became getting the chapters to the point that Dolly could understand them without recourse to Keith's ill.u.s.trations, often not yet done. If Dolly could follow the words alone, I figured less bright students would not have difficulty with my arguments suitably ill.u.s.trated. Dolly worked right through the fall of 1964 revising chapters as I wrote them. By then I had expanded MBG's scope, adding the chapters "The Importance of Weak Chemical Interactions" and "Coupled Reactions and Group Transfers" for students coming from biology with weaker backgrounds in chemistry. Together with many later chapters, they needed constant rewriting to keep pace with the latest scientific advances. The countless revisions of the initial galley proofs led to most of MBG MBG being completely reset. Even in page proofs I made many more changes than my publishers wanted, and they threatened to dock me with the charges involved. In the end, they never did so, realizing the value on balance of an up-to-the-minute book. being completely reset. Even in page proofs I made