"Introduction: Recent research in molecular biology"

Date:
1965
Reference:
PP/CRI/H/3/15
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: "Introduction: Recent research in molecular biology". Source: Wellcome Collection.

    2/29
    of the first to use the term widely, stated f 'lolecular Biology is predominantly thr ee-dimenslonal and structural. I myself, on the other hand, was forced to call myself m Molecular Biologist because when enquiring clergymen asked m© what I did, I got tired of explaining that I was a mixture of crystallo- grapher, biophysicist* biochemist and geneticist, an explanation which in any cae© they found too hará to grasp« She motives of people entering the subject were similarly mixed. Home were attracted because biological molecules are bigger ®mi more complicated than other molecules, while others felt that natural Selection is the sain principle of biology and that it needs an explanation in molecular teme. On those who essa« into the subject Just after the 1939-1945 9 war Sehr0dlnger*s little book What is Life? seems to have been peculiarly influential. Its sain point - that biology needs the stability of chemical bonas and that only quantum mechanics can explain this - was one that only a physicist would feel it necessary to make, but the book was extremely well-written and conveyed in an exciting way the ides that, in biology, molecular explanations would not only be extremely important but also that they were just around the corner. This had been said before, but 2 SchrodInger, S. (1944) What is Life? Caob. Univ. Press.