Letter>> Genetics • The UK
“Dear Michael, Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery,” so begins a letter written on March 19, 1953, by Francis Crick to his 12-year-old son. The letter written two weeks after Crick solved the DNA puzzle—the first written description of the code—is expected to fetch at least $1 million at an auction in London on April 10. Signed “Lots of love, Daddy,” it spells out each syllable of DNA’s full chemical name, “des-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid.”
It also contains the first written description of DNA as a code and of the mechanism of DNA replication—preceding the pivotal scientific articles about DNA’s structure and its genetic implications by more than a month. Robert Olby, Crick’s biographer, said he had quoted the full text of the letter in his 2009 book Francis Crick: Hunter of Life’s Secrets, because it was “the best description of the model existing at the time, so well explained”.
Michael Crick, now 72 and living in Seattle, said he remembered receiving the letter at his boarding school in England. “I was down with some sort of flu which they thought was infectious and shut in a room by myself and had lots of time to read the letter,” he said. “I remember reading it many times and reciting des-oxy-ribose nucleic acid.”
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