New Letters Illuminate Personalities, Story Behind DNA Structure Discovery

style=”float:left; margin-right:0px;” />

Updated 2:37 p.m. ET

Nine boxes of previously unknown letters, postcards and other correspondence from Francis Crick, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, have been unearthed in the files of his longtime colleague, according to an article published Wednesday in the journal Nature — and the discovery is adding new depth to the much-studied history of the 1953 scientific discovery.

“This doesn’t rewrite history, but [the letters] add some wonderful color and riches to the story — and nudge it in one or two new directions,” says Matt Ridley, the author of a biography of Crick.

Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for their discovery of the DNA double helix. The novel-like story of how they did it, complete with competing labs, interpersonal fights and outsize personalities, has captivated historians and readers ever since — beginning with Watson’s own retelling in his book “The Double Helix” in 1968.

But historians had long been missing one source of information. Crick himself believed that much of his correspondence from around the time of the discovery had been lost. In a 1975 letter to Watson, he wrote “Almost all of my own early correspondence was unfortunately thrown away without my knowledge by an over-efficient secretary.”

But in fact, he was mistaken. Some of his correspondence had become mixed in with the papers of his officemate Sydney Brenner, the Nobel prize-winning molecular biologist with whom he shared an office for 20 years, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s.

In December 2006, Brenner donated his own papers — correspondence, photographs, manuscripts and other documents — to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory archives. Archivists combing through the jumble of material found that among the 135 linear feet of Brenner documents were about 6 linear feet of new material from Francis Crick — nearly 5 percent of the collection. You can see the outline of the new material on the archives’ website.

The new letters provide insight into what Crick and the other players in the story were doing and thinking between 1951 and 1953, as Crick and Watson, working in the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, worked to decode the mystery of DNA’s structure. The pair were both competing against and occasionally working with Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, who using different methods to study the same problem at a lab at King’s College London. Meanwhile, friction between Franklin and Wilkins hindered the Kings College group’s efforts. And both labs, at the same time, saw themselves as competing with the American scientist Linus Pauling to solve the puzzle first.

The story has provided much fodder for historians, who have mapped the history of the scientists’ mix of competition and collaboration, and debated, among other things, whether Franklin was given enough credit for her contribution to the discovery. An X-ray diffraction image of the DNA molecule, taken by her and shown to Watson and Crick by Wilkins without her knowledge, proved crucial to the pair’s double helix deduction. Though Franklin was not eligible for the Nobel Prize — she died of ovarian cancer in 1958, and the prizes are not awarded posthumously — that episode, and others, have proved fodder for historical debate.

The new Crick documents include 34 letters and three postcards between Crick and Wilkins, some of which span the crucial 1951-1953 years. They mainly confirm and add a few new facts to the broad historical outlines of the story, says Jan Witkowski, the executive director of the Banbury Center at Cold Spring Harbor and one of the authors of the Nature article. They also give “vivid historical insight” into the personalities involved. “It’s very striking to read,” he says, “the words and tone leap off the page.”

For example, after Watson and Crick used some ideas from a King’s College colloquium to come up with their own — incorrect — early model of DNA in 1951, they were told to stop working on the DNA structure question. The historical record had it that the heads of the two labs — William Bragg and John Randall — got together and made the decision to tell Watson and Crick, both more junior researchers, to stop, according to the Nature paper. But the new letters show that Crick and Maurice Wilkins, with whom he was friendly, were privately discussing the matter away from the eyes of their bosses.

Wilkins’ personality is greatly fleshed out in the new letters, says Ridley. Wilkins, who had long been friends with Crick, was annoyed but couldn’t bring himself to truly have a falling-out with his friend. So he wrote two letters: one formal one that was seen by the bosses and basically told Crick to stay away from the DNA work. But in the other note, this one private, he apologizes and says “Dear Francis, this is just to say how bloody browned off I am entirely and how rotten I feel about it all…”

Crick responds two days later with a letter of his own, ending on a joking note:

“Cheer up and take it from us that even if we kicked you in the pants it was between friends,” he wrote. “We hope our burglary will at least produce a united front in your group!”

The boxes of Crick letters may be among the last new records historians find from that time, says Witkowski. “It’s an interesting question how much is still out there. All of the principals’ correspondence has been gone through, except for Wilkins’, which King’s College is going through now.”