Franklin had spent four years researching crystals in Paris before moving back to London to work on investigating the structure of DNA. She was given jam jars full of gooey DNA and began to take x-ray photographs of it.
Meanwhile in Cambridge, Crick and Watson made a homemade metal model of DNA as a way to represent, in reality, the ideas they were carrying around in their heads. They had several false starts. They made a triple helix in 1951 and invited Franklin to see it, and she pointed out the molecule as they had made it would never hold together. In 1953, after seeing a photograph taken by Franklin, their ideas fell into place. Finally, they got the model right, and made their physical double helix. This sketch was made around the same time: it was part of the process of grappling with exactly what the DNA molecule looks like. When finally the image became crystal clear in their minds, the scientists were ecstatic. Crick said, ‘It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clinches into place.’
Crick and Watson published their realization in the 25 April 1953 edition of Nature. The order of the names on the paper (Watson and Crick) was decided by the flip of a coin. The pair went on to win the Nobel Prize for their discovery, along with Dr Maurice Wilkins; Franklin, who had been pivotal to the research, died before the prize was awarded. Hopefully she would also have been honoured with the prize, had she been alive to receive it, for it would not have happened in the same way without her.
Now we know that a DNA molecule looks like the image in the sketch: a double helix. Every living creature on earth is made up of right-handed spiral shapes like this. The sketch, according to experts at the Wellcome Collection shows a few key features of the molecule. It is right-handed, it has two strands running in opposite directions, and the building blocks of the strands (nucleotides) have one part that forms the backbone of the molecule and another (the base) that sticks out into the middle of the helix to join with a base on the opposite strand. This joining of two bases is essential in order for DNA to pass on genetic information from one generation to the next. That’s quite a lot of information, crucial to our existence on Earth, in one pencil sketch, don’t you think?
There are at least 50 million cells in your body, and each one contains nearly 2 metres of DNA. Extracting your own is quite easy. If you’re the kind of geek who wants to try, follow these steps:
1. Swish salt-water around your cheeks.
2. Spit it into a glass containing water and washing-up liquid.
3. Mix for a minute or so.
4. Pour some ice-cold vodka, slowly, into the glass.
5. In a couple of minutes, you will see some white strands form. These are strands of DNA. If you were able to look closely at them, you’d see the double helix shape sketched in Crick’s drawing.
After co-winning the Nobel Prize, Crick became a household name. He was invited to all sorts of events, but he preferred to concentrate on his work, and keep to himself. In the archive is a ready-made, multi-purpose reply card from the 1960s, which reads:
Dr Crick thanks you for your letter but regrets that he is unable to accept your kind invitation to –send an autograph –help you in your project –provide a photograph or read your manuscript –cure your disease –deliver a lecture –talk on the radio or act as chairman –appear on TV or become an editor Delete where appropriate.
Later in life, Crick moved from Cambridge to San Diego, and worked at the Salk Institute there. He lived in a house called the Golden Helix. There he began focusing on neurobiology. He wanted to look inside the human brain, to study the networks, connections and firing patterns of neurons, as he thought they held the key to understanding mental activity and consciousness.
The Wellcome Library bought Crick’s papers in 2001, while he was still alive. They consist of his research papers, letters from people who were ill, a lovely letter from a young boy saying he’d enjoyed meeting Crick and letters from colleagues. They all give you a sense that Crick, like all scientists, was – of course – a real person. It makes science seem less removed from normal life.
Crick was keen for his work to become a part of this vast medical library, which anyone can access free of charge. On the day I visited, the library was packed with medical students cramming for exams. Perhaps one day, one of those students will make a breakthrough in healing and add their work to the collection, alongside the discoveries of herbalists in the fifth century and scientists like Crick.
[Crick’s doodle of a DNA molecule] As we leafed through Crick’s papers I instantly recognized the spiralling ladder that carries the Earth’s variety of life forms.
[Watson and Crick with their model of DNA] They made a model as a way to represent, in reality, the ideas they were carrying around in their heads.
[Crick wins a Nobel Prize] Telegram to Crick announcing his Nobel Prize, 1962. He won the prize jointly with Watson and Dr Maurice Wilkins for their work on the molecular structure of DNA and ‘its significance for information transfer in living material’.
AS WE WALKED ACROSS THE great hall, we started chatting. Finkel is very friendly, kind, interesting and seriously clever. He is one of only a hundred or so people in the world who can read cuneiform, the oldest form of writing in the world.
He was first shown the basics of how to read the script, when he started at university and he knew ‘within about 20 minutes this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my existence’. He learned cuneiform, and later applied to work with it at the British Museum. He got the job. ‘In that moment, I achieved my life’s ambition.’
Since that day in 1979, he has been working on the world’s largest, most cosmic jigsaw puzzle, piecing together pieces of cuneiform writing. His domain has been the Arched Room, a three-tiered room where all 120,000 of the British Museum’s behind the scenes cuneiform tablets are stored.
On the top two levels are books about cuneiform and the cultures that employed this form of writing. On the ground level is a long run of tables for cuneiform scholars to write at. The walls are lined with bookshelves that once stored the British Library’s Mills and Boon collection. Now they are filled with trays, each one containing glass-topped boxes. Inside the boxes are clay tablets covered with ancient cuneiform writing. It looks like an alien script.
Cuneiform script is made up of short, straight lines which go in different directions. The lines (called wedges) were imprinted in pieces of soft clay with a cut reed, used like a pen; ‘It looked a bit like a chopstick,’ explained Finkel. Cuneiform means ‘wedge shaped’, from the Latin cuneus, or wedge. The word doesn’t rhyme with uniform: you pronounce it ‘cu-neigh-i-form’.
A lot of the clay tablets in Finkel’s domain come from the Royal Library of King Ashurbanipal, who lived in the sixth century BC. ‘He was king of the world at the time,’ Finkel told me, ‘a proper Arabian Nights king – harems, exotic foods, hundreds of servants, chariots.’ But he was also literate, and he loved clay books. He built his capital in a city called Nineveh (today called Kuyunjik, in Iraq) and, at the heart of his palace, in the citadel, he created his library.
The library contained spells, myths about gods and heroes, stories of wrestling with bulls, recipes, astrology, medicine, histories, books on fortune telling, poems, love letters – and multiple copies of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Until I visited Finkel’s