You frequently state, and in your letter you imply, that I have developed a completely one-sided outlook and look at everything in terms of science. Obviously my method of thought and reasoning is influenced by a scientific training – if that were not so my scientific training will have been a waste and a failure. But…
Science, for me, gives a partial explanation of life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment. Your theories are those which you and many other people find easiest and pleasantest to believe, but, so far as I can see, they have no foundation other than they lead to a pleasant view of life…
All of these people, should they desire, can indicate events and details they remember differently. But there is one unfortunate exception. In 1958, Rosalind Franklin died at the early age of thirty-seven. Since my initial impressions of her, both scientific and personal (as recorded in the early pages of this book)…
Rosy's instant acceptance of our model at first amazed me. I had feared that her sharp, stubborn mind, caught in her self-made antihelical trap, might dig up irrelevant results that would foster uncertainty about the correctness of the double helix. Nonetheless, like almost everyone else, she saw the appeal of the…
BY mid-November, when Rosy's talk on DNA rolled about, I had learned enough crystallographic argument to follow much of her lecture.. Most important, I knew what to focus attention upon. Six weeks of listening to Francis had made me realize that the crux of the matter was whether Rosy's new X-ray pictures would lend…
Even worse, Maurice continually frustrated Francis by never seeming enthusiastic enough about DNA. He appeared to enjoy slowly understating important arguments. It was not a question of intelligence or common sense Maurice clearly had both; witness his seizing DNA before almost everyone else. It was that Francis felt…