Nobel prize winner James Watson is an exceptional scientist, but few who know his science realise he is also an exceptional writer.
This should change given the opening next month of an insightful exhibition in Trinity College Dublin's library of the writings of the co-discoverer of DNA's double helix. "Watson is a very good writer of science," says professor of genetics in Trinity's Smurfit Institute of Genetics David McConnell. "His textbook, The Molecular Biology of the Gene, changed the way science textbooks were written, with a huge emphasis on the visual."
The exhibition, Honest Jim, James Watson the Writer, opens to the public from September 5th through 27th in the library's famous Long Room. It will include 80 to 90 examples of Watson's writing skills, says TCD science communications officer, Lynn Scarff. The collection is varied, from a childhood notebook through Watson's PhD thesis and on to handwritten manuscripts of the two famous scientific papers published in 1953 which revealed both the shape and the functional characteristics of DNA's double helix.
The displays are part of a travelling exhibition of Watson's personal and professional writings, put together by the Cold Spring Laboratory on New York's Long Island where Watson is chancellor. The display will also include items from the Trinity library's collection that highlight the links between Irish scientists and Watson.
For example there will be documents associated with John Desmond Bernal, the Tipperary born scientist who pioneered the use of X-rays to study protein crystals, the method employed to determine the double helix shape of DNA. Another Irish connection is via Maurice Wilkins, who was born in New Zealand of Irish parents. Educated in Britain his X-ray work gave him a share of the 1962 Nobel Prize with Watson and Francis Crick.
There will also be a copy of the book What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger, published in Dublin while Schrödinger worked for the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Watson and his collaborator Crick frequently acknowledged how this book and the lectures that proceeded it powerfully influenced their own work in pursuit of the structure of DNA.
"These documents describe some of the most important science done by one of the most important scientists of the past century," McConnell says.
Watson will be in Dublin when the exhibition opens. He is taking part in a scientific conference at University College Dublin, the Bernal Symposium on Protein Crystallisation, taking place on September 3-4th. Watson will also be signing the roll that formally inducts him as a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, a body into which he was elected last year.
Access to the exhibition will include entrance to the library's Book of Kells display. Adult tickets for both cost €8 and students and seniors cost €7.
The exhibition's organisers are anxious to encourage visits by school students and for this reason student groups are being given access to the exhibition free of charge. For further information about school tours contact Lynn Scarff by email on lscarff@tcd.ie.
