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A Quiet Landmark in Biology– How Pus, Oozing From Discarded Bandages Led Us to DNA…

Had 19th century Swiss physiologist Friedrich Miescher been able to walk into ‘The Eagle’ pub in the centre of Cambridge today, he would have been utterly horrified. For not only does the pub serve a pint of specially brewed beer called ‘DNA’ (or at least it did when I went in there to unwind after a hard day in the archives a couple of years ago) but in one corner, is a plaque commemorating ‘the first public announcement of the discovery of DNA’ by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953.

The tourists who cluster around this plaque eagerly snapping photos on their phones would probably be disappointed however to learn that the plaque commemorates something that never actually happened. And although the beer may taste pleasant, its name is something of a misnomer.

This is because although Watson and Crick discovered its now famous double-helical structure, the honour for the discovery of DNA itself goes to Friedrich Miescher.

Almost a century before Watson and Crick, Miescher made his discovery whilst analysing the composition of white blood cells washed from pus scraped off discarded surgical bandages that he collected from a local hospital.

Along with Watson & Crick’s Nature paper of April 1953, Gregor Mendel’s work on pea hybrids and Charles Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’, Miescher’s work, finally published in 1871, is a landmark in biology – albeit a quiet one. But until now it has never been translated from the German in which it was originally written into English. Now, thanks to Cambridge University Press, Dr. Neeraja Sankaran and I are delighted to present what we believe to be the first complete translation of this milestone in the British Journal for the History of Science at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/dna-translated-friedrich-mieschers-discovery-of-nuclein-in-its-original-context/60A9706BE7610FFD42F805AE636670FA

‘A Bag of Cherries…’

Usually I spend my days writing and talking about long dead scientists who no-one has ever heard of – and trying to argue why people should have heard of them. But now for something very different. As part of National Story Telling week I was invited to read a story to the year 4 class at my youngest son’s school and decided to tell a tale based on my mother’s childhood experience as a refugee in the aftermath of World War Two. I was really impressed by the questions and enthusiasm of the class afterwards, especially as the children all talked about books that they had enjoyed. If you’re interested, you can read the story, called ‘A Bag of Cherries’, yourself just by clicking here. The teacher told me that she was in tears at the end – and I’m just hoping that this wasn’t because of my dodgy grammar and spelling.

And she set me some homework too – to get this written up as a children’s novel. Right then, nose to the grindstone…

And if you fancy giving your German a stretch…

Normalerweise bin ich mich so beschäftigt um über Wissenschaftler die schon lange todt und unerkannt sind zu verfassen. Aber diese Woche -etwas ein bisschen anders. Weil es hier ‘National Story Telling Week’ war, hat mich die Lehrerin meines jüngstes Sohnes eingeladen um die Schulklasse eine Geschichte zu erzählen. Ich hab überlegen was ich überhaupt sagen konnte – und dann kam eine Idee. Ich habe entscheiden eine Geschichte das auf die Erlebnis meine Mutter und Onkel als sie nur Kinder waren und als Flüchtlinge aus Ostpreussen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg gekommen waren begrundet war.

Ich war wirklich beeindruckt von den Fragen und der Begeisterung der Klasse danach, zumal die Kinder alle über Bücher sprachen, die sie genossen hatten. Wenn Sie interessiert sind, können Sie die Geschichte mit dem Titel “Eine Tüte Kirschen” selbst lesen, indem Sie hier klicken. Die Lehrerin sagte mir, dass sie am Ende in Tränen ausgebrochen war – und ich hoffe nur, dass dies nicht an meiner zwielichtigen Grammatik und Rechtschreibung lag.

Und sie hat mir auch einige Hausaufgaben gemacht – um dies als Kinderroman zu schreiben. Nun dann…jetzt geht’s los – wie wir hier in England sagen – ‘Nase zum Schleifstein‘…

Legumes and Linguistics…a New Translation of a Landmark in Biology

The title may not set pulses racing…but don’t be fooled. Alongside ‘On the Origin of Species’ by Charles Darwin in 1859 and the publication of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, ‘Experiments on Plant Hybrids’ by Gregor Mendel must rank as one of the biggest landmarks in the history of biology. Open any textbook of biology today and you’ll see Mendel hailed as the founding father of modern genetics for the work that he did in his monastery garden on peas. And as explained in ‘Mendel’s Martyrs’, his status as the discoverer of the gene was also enough to land Soviet scientists who supported his work in prison during the Cold War years.

But what was Mendel really up to with those peas? Professor Staffan Mueller-Wille and I are delighted that thanks to the support of the British Society for the History of Science we were able to produce a new translation of Mendel’s work and that this has now been published as a book by Masaryk University Press with forewords by historian Professor Patricia Fara and Nobel laureate Professor Sir Paul Nurse.