"You Have To Be Obsessive"

By Michael Lemonick

WHY DID YOU AND FRANCIS CRICK SOLVE THE STRUCTURE OF DNA BEFORE ANYONE ELSE?

People say we didn't deserve to solve it, and it's true that we were lucky, but we did deserve it, for a number of reasons. First, we thought it was the most important problem around. Others didn't realize that. Second, most people thought it couldn't be solved by building models--they thought you needed to get the answer primarily from X-ray crystallography of DNA. Rosalind Franklin's made that mistake. But we said, "It worked for Linus Pauling when he solved the structure of the alpha helix, so why not for us?" Third, we had each other. It helps to have someone else to take over the thinking when you get frustrated. Fourth, we were willing to ask for help and talk to our competitors. Again, Rosalind was so intelligent that she rarely sought advice. If you're the brightest person in the room, you're in trouble.

Fifth, you have to be obsessive. Jeff Goldblum played me in a BBC movie, and he was really unpleasant. But people told me, "You were unpleasant." It goes along with obsession, I'm afraid. Finally, both Francis and I knew we would have careers even if we failed, so we weren't desperate. Hence we were willing to trust that an idea that was only 90% certain was worth taking a chance on.

WHAT RECEPTION DID YOUR DISCOVERY GET?

Almost total silence. The number of references to the original papers was essentially zero until the 1960s. People waited for the explanation of how DNA duplicated itself and how its code was turned into proteins before they fully accepted our structure. They didn't understand that it was simply too good not to be true. That's one reason we didn't get the Nobel for nine years.

WAS THAT DISTRESSING?

It was actually quite pleasant. We didn't have a lot of competition, and we could work on related ideas, like RNA, with a very small number of other researchers who knew how important it all was.

YOU NEVER DID GET THE STRUCTURE OF RNA.

Right. But by the time I gave up, I was involved in training the wonderful graduate students I had at Harvard, where I'd joined the faculty in 1956.

Part OF WHAT ATTRACTED TOP STUDENTS WAS THE PROSPECT OF WORKING WITH YOU, RIGHT?

Well, not me, necessarily. We had a very strong department by then. I admit that I'd learned the practice from Sal Luria, my own adviser, of not putting my name on my student's papers. That means the students feel they're working for themselves, not for someone else. That might have influenced some of them.

YOU ALSO BECAME DIRECTOR OF THE COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY IN 1968.

Yes. The lab was in financial trouble, and they couldn't get anyone else to run it. I wanted to keep it alive, because this is such an important meeting place for biologists. I've been coming here for workshops and conferences since I was 20. One thing we did was to focus on the problem of understanding cancer; not only is it important, but cancer money is easier to get than other money. More recently, we've refocused on stopping cancer, since we understand so much about it by now.

WHAT'S YOUR SECOND GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT?

Writing The Double Helix. I think the book will last. No one else could have written it. Well, Francis could have written the story, but he has a different personality. He's interested in the result; I'm more interested in how the result came about.

ANYTHING ELSE YOU'RE PROUD OF?

I'm very proud of being the first director of the human genome project. It's just bound to give explanations for all sorts of phenomena. As a child, I always wanted explanations. Why does something happen--not what happens, but why? I really never would have guessed when we started how quickly it would go and how profound some of the implications would be. It's almost a cliche to say it, but it's true nevertheless that understanding the genome will completely change medicine.

ARE THERE ANY GREAT FRONTIERS LEFT IN BIOLOGY?

Absolutely. We've hardly skimmed off all the good stuff, so I don't feel a bit sorry for kids who are being born today. The way to do great science is to stay away from subjects that are overpopulated, and go to the frontiers. We have more frontiers now than when I was getting started. How the mind works, for example, is still a mystery. We understand the hardware, but we don't have a clue about the operating system. There are enough questions to keep people occupied for the next hundred years.