The double helix by James Watson

¶ … Double Helix

The book the Double Helix has one true hero, one main protagonist, of course, and that is James Watson. But others, including me, Dr. Linus Pauling, have had something to do with making Watson's project a success, and several of us worked hard at keeping things moving in the right direction. Discovering the secret to DNA, for Watson, was an event that put him on the list of great scientific discoveries and into history. I have my own scientific credentials, of course; I won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 due to my advocacy for the dangers of nuclear testing, and for my part in the nuclear disarmament movement; and earlier, in 1954, I was fortunate to have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

In the same year I won the Peace Prize, 1962, Watson won the Nobel Prize in Physiology - along with two of his colleagues - for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material." I had a great time long after we had first met kidding Watson about the fact that he shared his Nobel Prize with two other scientists; my Nobel Prize in Chemistry was mine alone but I poked fun at him in a friendly way.

Meanwhile, back in 1951 I had discovered important links to the structure of proteins and had made my presentation to the public and the press in Geneva, Switzerland. When Watson and I met, we both kidded each other in a friendly way of men teasing one another. Watson kidded me about the way I make presentations saying in he was going to accuse me of being a Hollywood showman in his book that he would some day write. Hey, I was just trying to make the structure of proteins interesting for the people in attendance, including the press, many of whom wouldn't know a protein from a pickle. Or a pear, for that matter.

But in any event, what I really enjoyed doing was helping to get people excited about chemistry, about science, about making discoveries. Watson was the kind of scientist who could get depressed. I told him his dreams of being famous were leading him down the wrong road. I said he should dream of the good his discoveries would do for the world and for the people who would benefit if science one day could fully understand the macromolecule. I always encouraged James Watson to remember this: don't get too high and excited when something goes well for you, and don't get too low and depressed when things don't go very well. He smiled and nodded his head when I first explained that to him.

One day when Watson was doing his research in Copenhagen working on his DNA discoveries, he received some journal articles that I had written, that were sent over from the U.S. He later told me when we met in London that he did not understand everything I was saying in the language of lab chemistry, but that he liked some of my interesting sentences. He said that when he writes his book to tell the world how he discovered the DNA secrets, he would write it in a way that would be fun to read even for a person not up to speed in deep math and chemistry. We exchanged letters in Europe in 1952 and agreed to meet.