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Genes, Girls, and Gamow: After the Double Helix, by James D Watson
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FROM THE PUBLISHER (Alfred A. Knopf): Immediately following the revolutionary discovery of the structure of DNA by James D. Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, the world of molecular biology was caught up in a gold rush. The goal: to uncover the secrets of life that the newly elucidated molecule promised to reveal. Genes, Girls, and Gamow is James Watson's report on the amazing aftermath of the DNA breakthrough, picking up where his now classic memoir, The Double Helix, leaves off.
Here are the collaborations and collisions of giants, not only Watson and Crick themselves, but also legions of others, including Linus Pauling (the greatest chemist of the day), Richard Feynman (the bongoplaying cynosure of Caltech), and especially George Gamow, the bearlike, whiskeywielding Russian physicist, who had turned his formidable intellect to the field of genetics; with Gamowan irrepressible prankster to bootWatson would found the legendary RNA Tie Club.
But Watsonat twentyfive already the winner of genetic research's greatest jackpotis obsessed with another goal as well: to find love, and a wife equal to his unexpected fame. As he and an international cast of roguish young colleagues do important research they also compare notes and share complaints on the scarcity of eligible mates. And amid the feverish search for the role of the then still mysterious RNA molecule, Watson's thoughts are seldom far from the supreme object of his desire, an enthralling Swarthmore coed who also happens to be the daughter of Harvard's most eminent biologist.
Part scientific apprenticeship, part sentimental education, Genes, Girls, and Gamow is a penetrating revelation of how great science is accomplished. It is also a charmingly candid account of one young man's full range of ambitions.
- Sales Rank: #2603159 in Books
- Published on: 2002-01-29
- Released on: 2002-01-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.60" h x 1.20" w x 9.40" l, 1.45 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 336 pages
Amazon.com Review
Readers unfamiliar with James D. Watson's previous memoir, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, may be surprised that his new one pays as much attention to his pursuit of the perfect woman as to the pursuit of knowledge. But Watson's 1968 book wasn't a bestseller because of its scientific material (though it was lucidly written for the general public); it was his candid portrait of professional rivalries, consuming ambition, and personal eccentricities that made it both popular and controversial. Even today, Watson's lively prose and decidedly frank opinions are still far from the norm. Oh sure, Girls, Genes, and Gamow contains plenty of information about his efforts (with colleagues ranging from bongo-playing Richard Feynman to the free-spirited George Gamow) to unravel the complexities of the RNA molecule from 1953 to '56. But Watson--still in his 20s at the time--also devotes pages to hard drinking, bitter marital breakups, and unwanted pregnancies among his not-so-high-minded peers, and his own anguished affair with a Swarthmore undergrad who left him for a German engineering student. It's not every Nobel Prize-winning biologist who would admit he was thrilled to have his photo in Vogue because it would "make 'with it' American girls more eager to know me," but that boyish openness gives Watson's book its charm. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
This classy memoir reads like a Who's Who of 20th-century science and picks up where the author left off in his classic book, The Double Helix. In 1953, Watson, then 25, and colleague Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, a historic achievement that won them both the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Here Watson, who quickly became an icon for biology students worldwide, gives a detailed, journal-writer's account of the aftermath, recalling with subtle humor his younger self's professional and equally pressing amorous ambitions. Professionally, the goal was to unravel the structure of a then still-mysterious molecule called ribonucleic acid, or RNA. Watson's scientific highs and lows are mingled with his adventures in academic high society, some of which have the flavor of Wodehousian lark, as when Wilson and fellow pranksters "temporarily absconded with the experimental lobsters" belonging to a boorish lecturer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod. Readers also encounter the "pope-like" figure of Caltech chemist Linus Pauling, the bongo-playing genius physicist Richard Feynman and of course Russian theoretical physicist George Gamow, the "zany," card-trick playing, limerick-singing, booze-swilling, practical-joking "giant imp" who founded with Watson the RNA-Tie Club. Reading Watson is a delight, an opportunity to breathe the rarefied air of his generation's greatest scientists and to crash a faculty cocktail party or two along the way.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This second autobiographical work by Nobel prize winner Watson provides additional details of his personal life and experience during and after his and Francis Crick's discovery of the double helix as the model for DNA structure in 1953. His first work, The Double Helix, has been widely read and republished in different editions. That work focused on the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule; the current work uses the same conversational style to fill in more of the story and talk about what happened after the discovery was announced. Watson includes many personal details, devoting a sizable portion of the book to his romantic life. He also discusses his encounters with the likes of Linus Pauling, Richard Feynman, and Russian physicist George Gamow. Because of the wide appeal of The Double Helix and the extensive publicity on current genetic research, this work will likely be popular as well. Accessible to many levels of readers, it is recommended for public and academic libraries. Eric D. Albright, Duke Univ. Medical Ctr. Lib., Durham, NC
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
14 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
More than you want to know
By A. J. Sutter
Normally I wouldn't take the time to add to a chorus of negative reviews, but this book was a doozy. The contrast between the author's reputation and what he reveals about himself is breathtaking.
The best part of this book: seeing how so many brilliant people wandered into so many dead ends while trying to figure out the structure of RNA and the genetic code in the 1950s. This is much more interesting than the usual presentation of scientific discoveries as faits accomplis.
Many physicists were drawn into this quest, including Richard Feynman. But it was the intuitions of (ex-physicist) Francis Crick that were right on the money, including his predictions of "RNA adaptors" much like transfer RNA, and of a triplet code with multiple reading frames (with S. Brenner). And unlike Watson and many others, he hadn't even been working on the problem full-time.
You do need to know at least a little about virology and molecular biology to enjoy this aspect of the book, because the text leaves a lot unexplained. So one wonders whom Watson intended as an audience - if he was thinking about his audience at all.
Watson certainly does think a great deal about, and of, himself. In his prologue he describes a 1986 visit to his old Cambridge office, where he found a grad student "who had no idea who I was ... The manners that Cambridge so long ago instilled in me did not let me reveal my identity." Later, describing a 1956 trip to Israel, he mentions his "relief" at "finding hosts who knew who I was."
His self-infatuation informs the "girls" aspect of the book too. Watson doesn't only kiss and tell, he holds hands and tells, hugs and tells, exchanges long meaningful glances with wives of friends and tells, and guides "once-ripe" mothers of friends on the dance floor and tells. He freights the slightest incidents with unspoken meaning -- but ultimately comes across like the virginal Eric Idle character in the "Nudge, nudge" Monty Python routine. Thankfully, we never hear if he ever made it to second base or beyond.
How could he recall all this 50 years later? According to the introduction, his former heartthrob, Christa Mayr Menzel, gave him access to 60 letters he'd sent her during this period. (He started pursuing her when she was a 17-year-old high school senior, and he was a Ph.D. of 25 or so.) But if his letters really detailed every time he walked on the beach with some other girl after a drunken party before a chaste good-night, it's no wonder Ms. Mayr grew cold to him. Watson thinks it appropriate to include reproductions of two banal postcards from her (one of which is signed "love, Christa", as if he has something to prove to us), plus the text of the whining letter he wrote to her father after she dumped him.
By the book's epilogue it becomes clear that even after his Nobel Prize, Watson pursued only women who worked in his lab or were undergraduates. The water pistol comment quoted by a reviewer below leads one to suspect that they were nonetheless more mature than he.
The "happy ending" is his marriage to a Radcliffe sophomore less than half his age, a few days before his 40th birthday. His celebratory postcard to a Harvard colleague, "19 year old now mine," is creepy and chilling. Watson claims this has been a happy and durable union, and there's no grudging him that. But one wishes he'd kept some aspects of his life known only to his intimate circle, instead of sharing them with the unsuspecting reader.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
An Interesting Book on the Gene
By Jim
While I am a scientifically trained person, I did like this book, and I found it to be (on the whole) a "fast" read. The world of Jim Watson, in this work, really revolves around his relationship with a 17-year-old undergraduate, as well as his tries at dating people possibly more closer to his age. We see him succeed at trying to woo Christa, but then we also see his heart break when she announces that she does not have the same feelings for him. It's truely a love story that many people have been in, including me. Looking at this side of the book, it's excellent.
However, the science involved in this book was maybe the most lacking. We know he's doing research, but at times, we're left as to wonder what he was doing, or what he was working on. This was probably the most confusing and "slow" parts of the book because it just didn't seem to mesh well...and this part was probably the most hastily written. Also, the book seemed to end abruptly; Dr. Watson probably could have gone much further, but it left the readers hanging with the question "So what was next?"
Otherwise, this book is very good as a follow up to "The Double Helix."
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
A Science Giant's Informal Memoir
By Rob Hardy
James D. Watson produced a delightful and frequently hilarious book, _The Double Helix_, his 1968 account of how he and Francis Crick and their fellow researchers managed to jimmy molecular models into just the right positions to reveal the structure of the huge molecule DNA. It was one of the greatest discoveries science had ever made, announced in 1953 and gaining the Nobel Prize in 1962. Watson's book wonderfully well recounts the race to get the structure down, and it was a classic scientific memoir exciting enough to make it a best seller. Watson was only 25 years old when DNA was cracked, and besides biochemistry, he had other things on his mind. Girls. Thus he has produced _Genes, Girls, and Gamow: After the Double Helix_ (Knopf) to tell what happened to him after his epochal success. "I felt the need to have more than the double helix below my belt before winning the prize. I did not want to be overpraised for what was not very difficult science." That sort of modesty pervades his book.
Although genes get the first mention in the title, and there is plenty of science here, the chief part of the memoir is devoted to "girls," always on Watson's mind. It is amusing that a scientist who will be remembered forever for his monumental discovery often sounds like a confused loveless teenager seeking female solace. He frets when a girlfriend doesn't write, for instance, and stumbles in sexual endeavors. The final part of the title refers to George Gamow, an amazing physicist who pops up all over American science in the forties and fifties. His heavy drinking ("his idea of a tall drink was a tall glass completely filled with whiskey") and uproarious pranks made him disliked by many in the staid science world, but Watson reflects, "His role was to have a good time no matter the consequences to the ethos of science." Pranks were not only Gamow's stock in trade; the book is surprisingly full of them, perpetuated sometimes in official journals, sometimes by Watson, sometimes against Watson. He writes about the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, "I deeply offended several old-timers by giving lectures in unlaced tennis shoes and wearing my floppy hat at night as well as during the day. My water pistol was also judged inappropriate, even though I generally restricted its aim to a pretty girl from the South taking invertebrate lab work too seriously."
It is great fun to see giants of science, like Feynman, Crick, and Delbruck, wander through these pages, usually in informal style. It is also interesting to see the international nature of serious scientific effort, with competition that is generally friendly. Watson is a breezy writer; the events described here, especially the details of his personal life, have none of the importance of the discovery of the double helix, and his amused and tolerant attitude comes forth on each page. It is a fond look back at a happy, busy life.
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