What Mad Pursuit

Written by one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953 and a co-winner of the Nobel Prize in 1962, What Mad Pursuit is Francis Crick’s history of early discoveries of molecular biology, including the determination of the structure of DNA and the elucidation of the genetic code. It complements James Watson’s best seller The DNA Helix. Like Watson’s book, Crick’s history contains many personal reminiscences.

Crick was a physicist who worked on weapons development in World War II. After the end of the war, he used the “gossip test” — to learn what you’re really interested in, see what you gossip about the most — to decide to move into molecular biology. At the age of thirty-three, he became a graduate student working on the crystal structure of proteins. Determining the structure of DNA was a side project.

The book’s chapters recount Crick’s participation in efforts to determine the structure of proteins and the structure of DNA, the identification of messenger RNA, and the elucidation of the genetic code.

In Crick’s eyes, the 1966 annual meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory marked the end of the classical period of molecular biology.

…By 1966 we realized that the foundations of molecular biology were now sufficiently firmly outlined that they could be used as a fairly secure basis for the prolonged task of filling in the many details.

From my point of view, this conclusion was wrongheaded. At that time, virtually all of the mechanisms of molecular biology remained completely obscure. It was not understood how DNA replication took place, how DNA was transcribed to messenger RNA, how messenger RNA was translated to protein, and how all these processes were regulated.

Crick acknowledges this:

Although I did not appreciate it, molecular biology was on the verge of a massive step forward, caused by three new techniques: recombinant DNA, rapid DNA sequencing, and monoclonal antibodies…. I shall not attempt to describe these very important advances in detail, nor the remarkable results that are now appearing almost every day, mainly because I have not been directly involved in them myself.

What a mistake it was to abandon molecular biology! In the last quarter of the twentieth century, molecular biology became the preeminent science, and its success continues in this century.

As a scientist with a Ph.D. in molecular biology, I studied all of this in graduate school in the 1980s. For a more complete history of early molecular biology, I recommend The Eighth Day of Creation by Horace Freeland Judson.

For balance in the controversy over Rosalind Franklin’s contribution to determining the structure of DNA, I recommend Rosalind Franklin and DNA by Anne Sayre.

My rating: 4 stars, very good