This digitised material is free to access, but contains information or visuals that may:<ul><li>include personal details of living individuals</li><li>be upsetting or distressing</li><li>be explicit or graphic</li><li>include objects and images of objects decontextualised in a way that is offensive to the originating culture.</li></ul>By viewing this material, we ask that you use the content lawfully, ethically and responsibly under the conditions set out in our <a href="https://wellcomecollection.cdn.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/d4817da5-c71a-4151-81c4-83e39ad4f5b3_Wellcome+Collection_Access+Policy_Aug+2020.pdf">Access Policy</a>.

You must accept the terms to view the content.

"Comma-less codes"

item

Galleries and Reading Room

Café

Shop

Library

Our galleries are quietest on weekdays and weekend mornings. At busy times, particularly on Saturdays, you may need to queue for our temporary exhibitions.

We’re undertaking some research with website visitors to learn more about how people find access-related information provided by museums. This survey shouldn't take longer than 10 minutes to complete. Thank you for your time!

Help us organize our website content.

Crick, J S Griffith, and L E Orgel, "Comma-less Codes". A Note for the RNA Tie Club, privately circulated, May 1956.

The file comprises three typescripts (one of which is an early draft with corrections and insertions), and a copy of the distributed mimeograph RNA Tie Club Note signed "Sydney Brenner". Forty mimeograph copies were produced.

Note: in the titles (two in holograph) to all typescripts, J S Griffith is mis-spelled "J S Griffiths", an error corrected in the distributed mimeograph.

The title-page epigraph ("It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation can suffice for the discovery of new works, since the subtlety of nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument. Francis Bacon.") is drawn from Bacon, Aphorisms on the Interpretation of Nature and the Realm of Man, Book I of Novum organum (1620), where it appears, with its complementary second sentence, as Aphorism XXIV: "It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works; since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the way to new particulars, and thus render sciences active."

Wellcome uses cookies.

"Comma-less codes"

Licence and re-use

Wellcome uses cookies.

Content advisory

"Comma-less codes"

Licence and re-use