Beschreibung:

WATSON, James Dewey (b.1928), Francis Harry Compton CRICK (1916-2004), Maurice Hugh Frederick WILKINS (1916-2004), Alexander Rawson STOKES (1919-2003), Herbert R. WILSON, Rosalind E. FRANKLIN (1920-1958) and Raymond G. GOSLING (b.1926). 'Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids', offprint from: Nature , vol. CLXXI, pp.737-741. [London]: Macmillan, 1953. 8° (210 x 140mm). Half-tone and line illustrations. Original wrappers. FIRST EDITION, THE RARE THREE-PAPER OFFPRINT ISSUE. THE FIRST PUBLISHED ACCOUNT OF THE MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF DNA. Grolier Medicine 99.
WATSON, James Dewey (b.1928), Francis Harry Compton CRICK (1916-2004), Maurice Hugh Frederick WILKINS (1916-2004), Alexander Rawson STOKES (1919-2003), Herbert R. WILSON, Rosalind E. FRANKLIN (1920-1958) and Raymond G. GOSLING (b.1926). 'Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids', offprint from: Nature , vol. CLXXI, pp.737-741. [London]: Macmillan, 1953. 8° (210 x 140mm). Half-tone and line illustrations. Original wrappers. FIRST EDITION, THE RARE THREE-PAPER OFFPRINT ISSUE. THE FIRST PUBLISHED ACCOUNT OF THE MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF DNA. Grolier Medicine 99. CRICK, F.H.C. 'The Structure of the Hereditary Material', offprint from: Scientific American , October 1954. San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman, 1954. 4° (280 x 212mm). Photographic and line illustrations. Original wrappers. CRICK, F.H.C. 'Nucleic Acids', offprint from: Scientific American , vol. 197, no. 3, pp. 188-200, September 1957. San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman, 1957. 4° (279 x 210mm). Photographic and line illustrations. Original wrappers. Provenance : Maurice Wilkins, given by him to Professor Stephen Neidle, his colleague at the Biophysics Department, King's College London, between 1972 and 1985. Sold with the three offprints are a mechanically-reproduced letter from Wilkins (signed 'Maurice') with autograph salutation to Neidle, London, 16 January 1985, one page, 4°, inviting him to a meeting commemorating Sir John Randall and stapled to a programme of the meeting; and colour photocopies of two letters from Crick and Linus Pauling about the 1957 offprint. THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE STRUCTURE OF DNA AND TWO PAPERS ON DNA BY CRICK FROM THE LIBRARY OF MAURICE WILKINS, co-author of 'Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids' -- the second paper in 'Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids' -- and co-winner of the 1962 Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine with Watson and Crick. A New Zealander by birth, Wilkins studied physics at St John's College, Cambridge, before undertaking post-graduate research at the University of Birmingham, where he was research assistant to John Randall receiving his doctorate in 1940. In the early years of World War II he worked on radar screens and other military projects, before moving to Berkeley, California, where he assisted in the development of the atomic bomb. Relinquishing the field of nuclear physics for that of biophysics after the war (and becoming an active campaigner against nuclear weapons), he rejoined Randall first at the University of St Andrews, and then at the Medical Research Council at King's College London in 1946. There Wilkins studied the structure of DNA using X-ray diffraction, and discerned what was apparently a structure formed of a double spiral, which stimulated Watson and Crick to correctly posit the double-helix structure for DNA. As Wilkins et al. emphasise in 'Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids', the discussion was 'not without ambiguity' but 'reasonable agreement' was found 'between the experimental data and the kind of model described by Crick and Watson and Crick' (p. 8). (4)