To: Biomaven who wrote (14563 ) 12/8/2004 8:53:12 PM From: Doc Bones Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 52153 ... OT 7. THE DOUBLE HELIX by James D. Watson 27. THE ANTS by Bert Hoelldobler and Edward O. Wilson I've always admired Wilson for his sociobiology and his efforts to make people aware that they are destroying their planet. The abrasive Watson made life miserable for Wilson at Harvard. As far as Watson was concerned, any biology that wasn't hard-core molecular was just "Our friend, the ant." [And BTW, the ant is our friend as the leading turner of soil and leading predator on insects.] ;-) Docobserver.guardian.co.uk ... In a memoir of this period, Edward O Wilson, Harvard's great classical biologist, and author of The Diversity of Life , described Watson as 'the most unpleasant human being he had ever met'. At department meetings, Wilson suggested, 'Watson radiated contempt in all directions. Having risen to fame at an early age, [he] became the Caligula of biology. He was given licence to say anything that came into his mind and expected to be taken seriously. And unfortunately he did so, with casual and brutal offhandedness.' It was perhaps at this time that Watson realised he was not made for traditional academia. The turning point came, it seems, in 1968. The publication of The Double Helix , some of which had grown out his anecdotal lectures at Harvard, gave him more of the fame he desired. His colleagues were less amused. Maurice Wilkins, who pioneered the work in DNA at King's College alongside Franklin, and who was given the Nobel Prize with Crick and Watson, was not a man given to pejoratives but declared the book to be 'extremely badly written, juvenile and in bad taste'. Crick, who always 'behaved', Watson says, 'like my elder brother and still does' - believed it a 'violation of friendship'. But Watson wasn't too bothered. He held to his notion that it was impossible to separate the science from the scientists. 'People said why didn't I give Rosy Franklin credit in the book, but it would have been impossible to do that without writing her book. The story could not be told from every point of view. This was my story. And I was aware that I would be the person most damaged by it, because people would say I shouldn't have seen that photograph [an X-ray of the crys talline structure of DNA] that Rosy Franklin made.' ...