Chapter 22 Summary

Watson and Crick didn't hear anything from Pauling's lab in Pasadena through Christmas. Watson told Maurice that Pauling was working on the problem of DNA structure, but Maurice was more concerned with the happy news that Rosy was leaving King's lab in several months and discontinuing her work on DNA, leaving Maurice free to pursue it. Then, Peter and Bragg received copies of a manuscript by Pauling, explaining his new model for the structure of DNA. Watson was crushed until, on reading the paper, he realized that there was a fundamental and basic flaw in Pauling's model. The phosphate molecules were not ionized. The DNA acid was not acidic. This error was confirmed by other scientists in the lab. The model was flawed. Pauling hadn't won the race, and Watson and Crick still had a chance to discover the correct structure of DNA...