Obituary: Professor Gerald Elliott

Ukrainian Biochemical Journal, 2020

In the 20th century, DNA became a magnet, attracting representatives of various sciences. Prominent researchers competed among themselves to discover the structure of DNA and to explain the mechanisms that determine our "natural fate", i.e., our heredity. an american chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer linus Pauling, a British physicist and molecular biologist maurice Wilkins, a British chemist, biophysicist, and X-ray crystallographer rosalind Franklin, an american geneticist, molecular biologist, zoologist James Watson, a British molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist Francis Crick were among them. They searched for the scientific explanation for the enigma of life hidden in DNA. An accurate description of DNA double-helical structure belongs to James Watson and Francis Crick. However, the missing pieces of the puzzle were elaborated by Rosalind Franklin, who was not given enough credit for her dedicated scientific work. Unlike her, Francis Crick, James Watson, and maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material. Whatever the DNA story is, it shows that all great scientific discoveries are not made from scratch. The immense number of people have contributed to the development of science and literally every researcher stands on the shoulders of giants, while the idea itself is in the air. The discovery of the structure of DNA became a cornerstone for the new scientific paradigm-biology acquired a molecular and biochemical basis. K e y w o r d s: DNa, DNa double helix, James Watson, Francis Crick, rosalind Franklin, maurice Wilkins, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or medicine 1962.

Identifying Mutation

Page 1. 231 Medical Physicists, Biology, and the Physiology of the Cell (1920–1940) Alexander von Schwerin Introduction: Mutations and Target Theory in Germany It seems nearly impossible to speak about German genetics ...

The Philosophical Review, 1984

1953 AND ALL THAT. A TALE OF TWO SCIENCES* Philip Kitcher "Must we geneticists become bacteriologists, physiological chemists and physicists, simultaneously with being zoologists and botanists? Let us hope so."-H. J. Muller, 1922' 1. THE PROBLEM T oward the end of their paper announcing the molecular structure of DNA, James Watson and Francis Crick remark, somewhat laconically, that their proposed structure might illuminate some central questions of genetics.2 Thirty years have passed since Watson and Crick published their famous discovery. Molecular biology has indeed transformed our understanding of heredity. The recognition of the structure of DNA, the understanding of gene replication, transcription and translation, the cracking of the genetic code, the study of gene regulation, these and other breakthroughs have combined to answer many of the questions that *Earlier versions of this paper were read at Johns Hopkins University and at the University of Minnesota, and I am very grateful to a number of people for comments and suggestions. In particular, I would like to thank

HERE I relate my version of how the structure of DNA was discovered. In doing so I have tried to catch the atmosphere of the early postwar years in England, where most of the important events occurred. As I hope this book will show, science seldom proceeds in the straightforward logical manner imagined by outsiders. Instead, its steps forward (and sometimes backward) are often very human events in which personalities and cultura1 traditions play major roles. To this end I have attempted to recreate my first impressions of the relevant events and personalities rather than present an assessment which takes into account the many facts I have learned since the structure was found. Although the latter approach might be more objective, it would fail to convey the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty. Thus many of the comments may seem one-sided and unfair, but this is often the case in the incomplete and hurried way in which human beings frequently decide to like or dislike a new idea or acquaintance. In any event, this account represents the way I saw things then, in 1951-1953: the ideas, the people, and myself.

Transversal, 2018

We discuss a less known aspect of Feynman's multifaceted scientific work, centered about his interest in molecular biology, which came out around 1959 and lasted for several years. After a quick historical reconstruction about the birth of molecular biology, we focus on Feynman's work on genetics with Robert S. Edgar in the laboratory of Max Delbruck, which was later quoted by Francis Crick and others in relevant papers, as well as in Feynman's lectures given at the Hughes Aircraft Company on biology, organic chemistry and microbiology, whose notes taken by the attendee John Neer are available. An intriguing perspective comes out about one of the most interesting scientists of the XX century.

Acta Crystallographica Section D Biological Crystallography, 2012

Journal of the History of Biology, 1990

We are grateful to the commentators for taking the time to respond to our article. Too many interesting and important points have been raised for us to tackle them all in this response, and so in the below we have sought to draw out the major themes. These include problems with both the term 'ultimate causation' and the proximate-ultimate causation dichotomy more generally, clarification of the meaning of reciprocal causation, discussion of issues related to the nature of development and phenotypic plasticity and their roles in evolution, and consideration of the need for an extended evolutionary synthesis.

Biophysical Journal, 2014

The sliding filament model of muscle contraction, put forward by Hugh Huxley and Jean Hanson in 1954, is 60 years old in 2014. Formulation of the model and subsequent proof was driven by the pioneering work of Hugh Huxley (1924-2013). We celebrate Huxley's integrative approach to the study of muscle contraction; how he persevered throughout his career, to the end of his life at 89 years, to understand at the molecular level how muscle contracts and develops force. Here we show how his life and work, with its focus on a single scientific problem, had impact far beyond the field of muscle contraction to the benefit of multiple fields of cellular and structural biology. Huxley introduced the use of x-ray diffraction to study the contraction in living striated muscle, taking advantage of the paracrystalline lattice that would ultimately allow understanding contraction in terms of single molecules. Progress required design of instrumentation with ever-increasing spatial and temporal resolution, providing the impetus for the development of synchrotron facilities used for most protein crystallography and muscle studies today. From the time of his early work, Huxley combined electron microscopy and biochemistry to understand and interpret the changes in x-ray patterns. He developed improved electron-microscopy techniques, thin sections and negative staining, that enabled answering major questions relating to the structure and organization of thick and thin filaments in muscle and the interaction of myosin with actin and its regulation. Huxley established that the ATPase domain of myosin forms the crossbridges of thick filaments that bind actin, and introduced the idea that myosin makes discrete steps on actin. These concepts form the underpinning of cellular motility, in particular the study of how myosin, kinesin, and dynein motors move on their actin and tubulin tracks, making Huxley a founder of the field of cellular motility.

2009

Today biophysics is an established biological discipline. It may be described as a spectrum of physics-based techniques applied to biological problems. This becomes more evident when one goes back in the history of biophysics. Within Germany, the X-ray tube stood at the center of the disciplinary formation of biophysics. This article traces back the origins of biophysics to the very beginnings of radiology in the first two decades of the 20th century. Rather than biology itself, it was this early context of the practical use of the X-ray generator that initially introduced physicists to medical and biological problems. X-rays defined an innovative field of research and medical practice, particularly radiotherapy, binding physicians, including gynecologists, surgeons, radiologists, and physicists together. Physicists working on medical problems were sometimes called “medical physicists”. While radiology developed later into a medical discipline, institutions of medical physics existe...