The Struggles of Sisyphus: the Tragic Tale of Friedrich Miescher

Having just finished working on a new book with my co-author Prof. Ralf Dahm, all about little known 19th century Swiss scientist Friedrich Miescher who discovered DNA in 1869, I had my first dabble with ChatGPT to generate an idea for the cover. Having died at the tragically young age of 51 and burdened by a growing sense of never having fulfilled everything he had hoped to achieve, Miescher once compared his struggles to those of Sisyphus, the figure in Greek mythology who was punished by the gods of Olympus to spend eternity rolling a boulder up a mountain slope. We’re hoping that the book will be published in 2025 and although we’re unfortunately not going to be able to use this image on the cover, I wanted to share it anyway!

Sisyphus from Greek mythology rolling a boulder up the ascending coils of the DNA double helix
19th century Swiss scientist Friedrich Miescher who discovered DNA in 1869 once compared the challenges he faced to the struggle of Sisyphus…image created by DALL-E

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *