Microbiologists Gather to Hear Stories of the Double Helix

10 September 2003

Hundreds of experts from the fields of microbiology, medical research and genetic modification will meet today in Manchester to hear how the famous double helix of DNA came to be accepted as the crucial central role it now plays in science. A special public lecture will be given by Dr Soraya de Chadarevian at 18.00hrs, Wednesday 10 September 2003, at the Society for General Microbiology's meeting at UMIST in Manchester.

The Society's meeting brings together specialists from a huge range of medical and scientific disciplines, from chemical engineering to experts in anthrax. It gives an opportunity for scientists to exchange information and pool their knowledge from different branches of science, many of which have developed since the revolutionary discovery by James Watson and Francis Crick, 50 years ago in Cambridge.

Rather than take its fame for granted, Dr Soraya de Chadarevian, a historian of molecular biology at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, will reconstruct how, after nearly falling into oblivion, the DNA double helix came to be seen as the most important discovery of the 20th Century.

Using her wide knowledge of unpublished papers and interviews with key participants, Dr de Chadarevian traces the impact of research at that time. "It is now generally accepted that Watson and Crick's presentation of their double helical model of DNA in 1953 did not create a stir right away," says Dr de Chadarevian. "The double helix has acquired its prominence retrospectively, as indeed all discoveries do".

Now seen as the foundation of much controversial modern science, including the development of GM foods, Watson and Crick's discovery did not gain its central role until the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"This does not mean that Watson and Crick's proposal of the structure did not represent an important achievement at the time," explains Dr de Chadarevian. "Their work stimulated more research, and the work of all of those scientists who further probed the structure and function of DNA was essential to give the double helix the status it has today".

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