Chapter 20 Summary

Watson began to diverge from the problem of DNA, instead studying the sexes of bacteria. Scientists knew that there were male and female bacteria, and Watson worked on the process by which bacteria reproduce. Francis was uninterested. He felt that Chargraff's work was a key to DNA, but he made no progress. Watson felt that they didn't know enough to productively take up DNA again. He was not interested in another failure, like the previous model. Peter Pauling, Linus Pauling's son, arrived at Cambridge as a student, and the scientists were reassured by his information that Linus Pauling was working on how his protein helixes created coils within coils. This was an issue that Francis was interested in, so Francis rushed to work on it and publish a paper before Linus could. Francis did come up with a solution and published it in...