Letters shed light on bitter rivalries behind discovery of DNA double helix

 

Newly found letters between Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins illuminate the race to determine the structure of DNA

Ian Sample, science correspondentguardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 September 2010

Francis Crick (left) and James Watson in Cambridge. They created the first double helix model of DNA in 1953. Photograph: AP

A cache of missing letters, postcards and other documents belonging to Francis Crick, the scientist who helped crack the structure of DNA in the 1950s, has been discovered by researchers in America.

The nine archive boxes of lost correspondence include letters that reveal the exasperation and strained relationships at the heart of one of the greatest discoveries of modern science.

Crick died in 2004. Almost all of his early correspondence was thought to have been thrown away by an over-efficient secretary at Cambridge University, where Crick and James Watson created the first double helix model of DNA in 1953.

A report in the journal Nature reveals that the letters were not discarded, but had become mixed up with papers belonging to another scientist, Sydney Brenner, who shared an office with Crick for 20 years and recently donated his own archive materials to the library at Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in New York.

«It was amazing to find it all,» said Alex Gann, editorial director at Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory Press, who made the discovery with his colleague Jan Witkowski. «It was only when we were going through it that we realised the signficance of what we had found.»

Among the newly found documents are 34 mostly handwritten letters between Crick and his friend and rival, Maurice Wilkins, who worked at King’s College London alongside X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin. Eleven of the letters span the period 1951 to 1953, when the two groups were racing to decipher the structure of DNA.

Wilkins began studying DNA with X-rays in 1950, but a year later Franklin arrived at King’s and without his prior knowledge was put in charge of the research. The relationship between the two was so fraught they barely spoke. At Cambridge, Watson and Crick took a different approach to DNA, using theory to work out its stucture.

Relations between the two teams took a turn for the worst in November 1951 when Watson visited London to hear Franklin describe her latest results. He returned to Cambridge and with Crick promptly built a model of DNA based on her data. The two then invited the King’s group to come and see the «clever thing» they had made. As soon as Franklin saw the model – a triple helix – she knew it was wrong. Watson had made a serious error.

The Cambridge team’s behaviour caused an immediate rift between the two groups. The King’s group wanted to share their work in a spirit of openness, but feared being beaten to the prize. According to most accounts, Watson and Crick were ordered to stop working on DNA after a quiet chat between William Bragg, head of the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge, and John Randall, his counterpart at King’s.

Two of the new letters shed fresh light on the fallout. On 11 December 1951, Wilkins wrote an official letter to Crick requesting the Cambridge team stop working on DNA. But the same day, he wrote a second, less formal letter, stating: «This is just to say how bloody browned off I am entirely and how rotten I feel about it all and how entirely friendly I am (though it may possibly appear differently). We are really between forces which may grind all of us into little pieces. I had to restrain Randall from writing to Bragg complaining about your behaviour.»

Crick’s reply on 13 December was characteristically breezy. He pointed out that Wilkins was close to solving one of the «key problems in biomolecular structure», and ended the letter: » … so cheer up and take it from us that even if we kicked you in the pants it was between friends. We hope our burglary will at least produce a united front in your group.»

In January 1953, Watson and Crick were back on the DNA problem and hoped to visit London for Franklin’s last talk on DNA before leaving the laboratory. In a confused and awkward letter, Wilkins wrote to Crick, suggesting they stay away. «Let’s have some talks afterwards when the air is a little clearer. I hope the smell of witchcraft will soon be getting out of our eyes.»

The «witchcraft» line referred to Franklin’s imminent departure.

A few months later, both teams published their landmark papers on the structure of DNA in Nature. Another letter to Crick, written soon after, reveals Wilkins’s exasperation that Franklin had not discovered the double helix sooner. «To think that Rosie had all the 3D data for nine months and wouldn’t fit a helix to it and I was taking her word for it that the data was anti-helical. Christ,» Wilkins wrote.

He shared the Nobel prize with Watson and Crick in 1962.

The correspondence, which also covers Crick’s doomed attempt to write a book and fears that he might leave the UK for America, is being digitised and will be available at the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory archive.

• This article was amended on 30 September 2010. The original said that Rosalind Franklin had been overlooked for the 1962 Nobel. This has been corrected.