An Ode to Bacteriophage Lambda

Poem by Richard O. Roblin III, who was a student of James D. Watson at Harvard University in the mid to late 1960s.

Digitized as part of the "Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics" project.

Watson on The War on Cancer

Dr. Watson has been in the news again lately after publishing a paper in the Royal Society's journal Open Biology.  In the paper Watson questions the benefits of anti-oxidants and criticizes the U.S.'s current "war on cancer."

This type of thing is really old hat for Watson, who has been a blunt critic of the way we have been funding cancer research since the 1970s, when he served on the National Cancer Advisory Board.  In March of 1975 he gave a speech at the dedication of the Seeley G. Mudd Building at MIT which also drew national headlines.

Watson was quickly inundated with letters from both scientists and the public, many whom agreed that we were not making enough progress with the the cancer problem.  One letter in particular caught my attention with a hypothesis that I believe has been completely overlooked in the ensuing years:

From One Nobel Prize Winner to Another

Ever since Dr. Watson won his Nobel Prize in 1962 people have been seeking his autograph.  As part of our digitization project, I'm creating metadata for these autograph requests and I'm plugging names into the Library of Congress Name Authority File to see if anyone of interest pops up.  I often wonder if the people who wrote to Watson later went on to achieve anything of note themselves.  

Well this morning I typed "Agre, Peter" into the search engine and was pleasantly surprised to find that Peter was in fact a fellow Nobel Prize winner.  Agre, who received the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of aquaporins, wrote to Watson in 1970 while he was studying medicine at Jones Hopkins.  Peter praised Watson for his work on The Molecular Biology of the Gene, and thanked him sending an autographed photo, which was now hanging up next to Pete's two other idols, Albert Einstein and Linus Pauling.  He concludes with the letter with, "I will always be grateful and inspired."  

I can't help but imagine that some future Nobel Prize winner has written (or tweeted) Agre himself -- and that in 50 years or so some archivist will be as amused by these connections as me.

Early Impressions of The Double Helix

One thing that I have learned about Dr. Watson as a writer is that he is not shy about sharing unfinished drafts with colleagues.  We have scores of letters from the likes of Paul Doty, Tom Maniatis, and Matt Meselson commenting on early versions of Avoid Boring People.  He also famously shared drafts of The Double Helix with Crick and Wilkins, who were, somewhat understandingly, appalled.

As part of the "Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics" digitization project, we will soon be making these letters freely available online for the first time.

I found one particular set of letters regarding an early draft of The Double Helix very interesting.  Watson had sent a copy of the manuscript to an acquaintance in the summer of 1965, who subsequently sent a series of letters back to Watson documenting her delight with the draft.  Her name was Suzanne Reeder, had just left Cambridge (Massachusetts), and was obviously close with Watson.  The letters start in July 1965.  She mentions attending a conference in Berlin, as well as meeting Odile Crick in Cambridge sometime earlier, before returning home to England.  Towards the end of the letter she indicates that she will be flying back to the states, and then asks for a copy of the book.

Watson apparently swore Suzanne to secrecy -- he clearly knew that the book would be controversial.

Her initial impressions of Crick are quite positive: "You make Francis sound tremendous -- he gets better as one reads on."

Suzanne anticipates that Watson will have trouble publishing the memoir: "What a pity you can't print it as written."

She was also acquainted with Walter Gilbert, and discusses problems with his repressor research below.  "I shall be quite sad to think of all his work unrewarded -- all those sleepless hours in the cold room."  He was rewarded, about 25 years later, with a Nobel Prize.

Her impressions of Crick clearly change as the book progresses:  "The more I read, the more I think Francis must just be horrifying.  I sewed a piece of his dressing gown [presumably a memento from her meeting with Odile] into my quilt yesterday and I think that's as close as I'd want to get to him"

She also mentions Watson's great success with his other famous work, the Molecular Biology of the Gene.  Watson tends to work on multiple projects at the same time.  Both MBotG and The Double Helix were written in the early 1960s.  Genes, Girls, and Gamow and Avoid Boring People were both written throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.  When he assumed the directorship of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory he remained a professor at Harvard, and he served as head of the U.S. Human Genome Project while still leading CSHL.

She didn't get to read the finished work in 1965.  Watson was traveling across Africa meeting with local scientists and giving lectures for the Ford Foundation, and did not have time to complete the manuscript as of yet.  Suzanne ends the letters prophetically: "I am absolutely certain that the book contains libel - which is tragic, since the libelous bits are so hilarious.  I hope the lawyer doesn't mutilate it too much."

Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics Preview on Flickr

For the past year we have been digitizing documents from the James D. Watson and Sydney Brenner Collections as part of the Wellcome Library's  "Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics" project.  This includes all types of documents: letters, postcards, handwritten manuscripts, laboratory data, and even Watson's day calendars.  But the images I was most interested in come from Watson's extensive photograph collection. 

The photos document Watson's entire life, from his infancy to his 80s.  In fact, they go back even further -- the portrait above is of his father, James D. Watson, Sr., and was taken in 1897.  Take a closer look at the photograph and you will notice that little Jimmy is not seated on a chair, but is actually on his mother's lap!  Taking portraits was a much lengthier procedure in the 19th century, so mothers often hid beneath a sheet to comfort their children and keep them still throughout the photo session. The result is a slightly unsettling image of an infant held by a cloaked specter (known as "ghost mothers").

For more early images from the Watson Collection check out our Flickr page where we will be providing a preview of the photographs digitized as part of "Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics" project.

1968: A Banner Year for Watson

Letter from Robert Langridge to Watson
congratulating him on the three major events of 1968

1968 was a momentous year in the life of James D. Watson, perhaps only eclipsed by 1953, the year of his famous co-discovery. Coincidentally, three major events occurred during the year, each of which would shape the course of his life to come. 

First, his personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA was published and became a surprise bestseller.  Watson had been interested in writing for much of his life (influenced by his mother and father, both avid readers), and he viewed the success of his memoir as one of his great accomplishments.  As of 2012, he has written a number of non-fiction works, including a sequel to his 1968 memoir (Genes, Girls, and Gamow).

1968 was also the year that Watson took over as Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.  It's former director, John Cairns, had almost single-handily saved the lab from certain financial doom during his brief tenure in the mid-1960s.  While its finances had been stabilized, it was up to Watson to drum up enough money to rehabilitate the lab's facilities and hire a new generation of scientists to work on the new major problems in biology.  It was Watson who decided the research focus of the lab should be cancer and with grant money flowing from the "War on Cancer" he was able (with the help of Joseph Sambrook) to build new laboratories and initiate a tumor virus program to rival any other research institution.  It was here, on the north shore of Long Island, that Watson honed his skills as a spokesman and fundraiser for scientific research.

Finally, it was also the year of his marriage to Elizabeth Lewis.  Watson had famously remained a bachelor until well into his late-30s, despite all efforts find the perfect bride.  He was rewarded for his patience, and has been happily married ever since.  The couple still live on campus at CSHL in their residence "Ballybung."

New Exhibit: A Natural Bestseller

CSHL Archives is proud to announce a new exhibit entitled "A Natural Bestseller: The Double Helix" which documents the publication of Dr. Watson's famous memoir using material that has been digitized as part of the "Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics" project.  The book was controversial when it was released--many praised its unprecedented insight to the personal lives of scientists, while others dismissed it as simply "gossip".  Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, the two other co-recipients of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA, were both strongly opposed to its release and their threat of legal action led to Watson's American publisher (Harvard University Press) to decided against publishing the book.  The exhibit includes a scathing letter from Crick to Watson (6 pages in length) with a laundry list of complaints regarding the manuscript.  Crick concludes his letter by noting, "My objection, in short, is to the widespread dissemination of a book which grossly invades my privacy, and I have yet to hear an argument which adequately excuses such a violation of friendship."  The letter clearly illustrates why The Double Helix was known as "That Controversial Book".

You can view the exhibit online at http://library.cshl.edu/naturalbestseller/ or in person at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library.

Having a Laugh with Watson

Working on the digitization of the James D. Watson Collection I have literally looked at thousands of documents and while all are of historical note and interest, I have kept note of items that exhibit extraordinary humor. The following items, by themselves, speak volumes about James D. Watson’s relationships with friends and fellow colleagues.

A letter from Francis Crick to James D. Watson in which Crick points out just a few problems he has found in Watson’s speech given at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Just another note from Boris Ephrussi to James D. Watson.

Dale Purves picks up on a Trivial Pursuit fact gone awry.  Perhaps you know the correct year? 

Letter from James D. Watson’s lawyer Ephraim London to Ed Gilbert regarding copyright, Crick dolls, and Super-Watson sweatshirts!    

- Stephanie Satalino, Digital Project Archivist

"Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics" Digitization Project

Postcard from Crick to Watson, from the James D. Watson Collection at CSHL
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library & Archives is pleased to announce a large-scale digitization project that will provide free, online access to the papers of Nobel Laureates Dr. James D. Watson and Dr. Sydney Brenner. This project is part of the Wellcome Library’s "Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics" series, and will include the papers of Francis Crick (Wellcome Library), Rosalind Franklin (Churchill College), and Maurice Wilkins (King's College, London), as well as Guido Pontecorvo, James Harrison Renwick and Malcolm Ferguson-Smith (University of Glasgow).

 Dr. Watson’s collection documents his life, from his early days in Chicago, to the discovery of the double helix structure in Cambridge (for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1962), to his role as a leader locally at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, as well as internationally as head of the Human Genome Project in the 1980s. Dr. Brenner’s collection documents his work on the genetic code and establishing the nematode c. elegans as a model organism for animal development and neurology (for which he won a Nobel Prize in 2002). Thus the papers which document the story of the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, as well as the early research on the genetic code, will be united online to be freely and easily accessible by scholars and educators alike.

BBC Radio 4 recently aired a segment on the digitization project on its Today program.  The segments includes interviews with Dr. Simon Chaplin, the head of the Wellcome Library, and Dr. John Sulston, who was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize with Sydney Brenner and  H. Robert Horvitz in 2002.  BBC medical correspondent Fergus Walsh, who contributed to the Today piece, also posted a story regarding the project in which he explores some of the material in the collections.