While at the library earlier this week to return Dr. Fei Fei Li’s book, I stumbled across another science memoir, this one The Double Helix by James D. Watson. It is a very easy read, fast paced, on topic, and rather funny in many ways. He tells on how, by working with chemists of various types, biologists, physicists, and X-ray crystallographers, he and Francis Crick pulled together the double-helix model of DNA. At the end of their work, there was a “race” with Linus Pauling for the correct answer and, they, in 1953 Cambridge, were the first to piece the puzzle together.
In one section, he mentions that around 1952, Linus Pauling of CALTEC had his passport withheld due to his pacifistic activities. The State department restored his passport to allow him to travel after international protests, you forget how the McCarthy era impacted the world of science as well.
