James Watson Tells You How He (and Crick) Solved DNA in The Double Helix

Finally, found time in my busy public-library audio lineup to squeeze in these not-so-riveting reads - James Dewey Watson's "The Double Helix" and "Chief - My Life in the LAPD" by Daryl Gates.

I was stunned to see this one rated at just four stars ****_. When I was done, I had exactly one bookmark - which confirms that this is, in fact, not a five star book. Most of the books I finish with more than 10 bookmarks tend to belong in the success/self-help category, but a lot of non-fiction - Eg. true crime, ones do get to double digits. 

Not Watson 😒

I expected a cliffhanger. I got a nice TED talk. For instance, from the superb "The Secret of Life" by Howard Merkel, you learn about Watson that he learned three key principles at Chicago: (1) To go directly to the intellectual source and not to parrot the interpretation of others. (2) To develop a theory of how a particular set of facts may fit together. (3) To not memorize facts - learn to think and rid your mind of unimportant things. Also, that the pursuit of knowledge, not background or wealth, was all that mattered to him. Even as a teenager, he was determined not to waste a moment on the pursuit of money, academic triviality, or idle learning. 

Was any of this in the Double Helix? I wish..

I soon was taught that Pauling's accomplishment was the product of common sense, not the result of complicated mathematical reasoning. Equations occasionally crept into his argument, but in most cases, words would have sufficed. The key to Linus' success was his reliance on the simple laws of structural chemistry. The Alpha Helix had not been found by only staring at X-ray pictures. The essential trick, instead, was to ask which atoms liked to sit next to each other. In place of pencil and paper, the main working tools were a set of molecular models superficially resembling the toys of preschool children. We could, thus, see no reason why we should not solve DNA in the same way.