Frederic Lawrence Holmes

In 1957 two young scientists, Matthew Meselson and Frank Stahl, produced a landmark experiment confirming that DNA replicates as predicted by the double helix structure Watson and Crick had recently proposed. It also gained immediate renown as a “most beautiful” experiment whose beauty was tied to its simplicity. Yet the investigative path that led to the experiment was anything but simple, Frederic L. Holmes shows in this masterful account of Meselson and Stahl’s quest. This book vividly reconstructs the complex route that led to the Meselson-Stahl experiment and provides an inside view of day-to-day scientific research--its unpredictability, excitement, intellectual challenge, and serendipitous windfalls, as well as its frustrations, unexpected diversions away from original plans, and chronic uncertainty. Holmes uses research logs, experimental films, correspondence, and interviews with the participants to record the history of Meselson and Stahl’s research, from their first thinking about the problem through the publication of their dramatic results. Holmes also reviews the scientific community’s reception of the experiment, the experiment’s influence on later investigations, and the reasons for its reputation as an exceptionally beautiful experiment.

A History of "The Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology"

Meselson, Stahl, and the Replication of DNA

Trevor Harvey Levere

Trevor H. Levere

From the days of the alchemists through the creation of the modern laboratory, chemistry has been defined by its instruments and experimental techniques. Historians, however, have tended to focus on the course of chemical theory rather than on the tools and experiments that drove the theory. This volume moves chemical instruments and experiments into the foreground of historical concern, in line with the emphasis on practice that characterizes current work on other fields of science and engineering. The principal themes are: change and stability, precision, the construction and transformation of apparatus, the dissemination of instruments, and the bridging of disciplines through instruments.The essays are divided into three chronological sections: The Practice of Alchemy (reviewing the material and iconographic evidence as well as the written record and the issue of reproducibility of alchemical experiments), From Hales to the Chemical Revolution (discussing significant seventeenth- and eighteenth-century innovations as well as smaller innovations that cumulatively extended the reach and improved the quality of chemical experimentation), and The Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (discussing the increasingly important role of innovative apparatus as chemistry grew into the first large-scale modern scientific discipline).Contributors : R. G. W. Anderson, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Maurice Crosland, Jan Golinski, Frederic L. Holmes, Trevor H. Levere, Seymour H. Mauskopf, William R. Newman, Mary Jo Nye, Lawrence M. Principe, Alan J. Rocke, Colin A. Russell, William A. Smeaton, Melvyn Usselman.

Instruments and Experimentation in the History of Chemistry

This comprehensive volume completes Frederic Holmes' notable and detailed biography of Hans Krebs, from the investigator's early development through the major phase of his groundbreaking investigation, which lay the foundations upon which the modern structure of intermediary metabolism is built. With access to Krebs' research notebooks as well as to Krebs himself through more than five years of personal interviews, the author provides an insightful analysis of Hans Krebs and of the scientific process as a whole. The first volume, published in 1991, covered Krebs' formative years in Germany, his work with Otto Warburg, and his discovery of the urea cycle in 1932. This second volume reconstructs the investigative pathway and the professional and personal life of Hans Krebs, from the time of his arrival in England in 1933 until 1937, when he made the discovery for which he is best known--the formulation of the citric acid cycle. Holmes portrays Krebs' activity at the intimate level of daily interactions of thought and action, from which the characteristic patterns of scientific creativity can best be seen. Holmes' fascinating portrait of Krebs integrates the great scientist's investigative pathways with his personal life. The result is an illuminating analysis of both man and scientist that will be of interest to biochemists and historians of science.

Hans Krebs

This is the first volume of a comprehensive scientific biography of Hans Krebs, one of the world's foremost biochemists. It treats his childhood, his medical education and scientific apprenticeship under Otto Warburg, his emergence as an independent investigator, and his discovery of the urea cycle in 1932. This early achievement, and his discovery of the citric acid cycle, are viewed as foundations for the modern structure of intermediary metabolism. During the writing of this fascinating history, the author had access to a complete set of Krebs' laboratory notebooks that reveal the daily dimensions of scientific creativity. Based in addition on many personal interviews with its subject, the Krebs biography is certain to interest and intrigue biochemists and historians of science alike. Volume 2: Hans Krebs: Architect of Intermediary Metabolism 1933-37, will appear in spring, 1993.

Hans Krebs: The formation of a scientific life, 1900-1933

This book relates how, between 1954 and 1961, the biologist Seymour Benzer mapped the fine structure of the rII region of the genome of the bacterial virus known as phage T4. Benzer’s accomplishments are widely recognized as a tipping point in mid-twentieth-century molecular biology when the nature of the gene was recast in molecular terms. More often than any other individual, he is considered to have led geneticists from the classical gene into the molecular age. Drawing on Benzer’s remarkably complete record of his experiments, his correspondence, and published sources, this book reconstructs how the former physicist initiated his work in phage biology and achieved his landmark investigation. The account of Benzer’s creativity as a researcher is a fascinating story that also reveals intriguing aspects common to the scientific enterprise.

Seymour Benzer's Adventures in Phage Genetics

Reconceiving the Gene

Charles Coulston Gillispie

Also available online as part of the Gale Virtual Reference Library under the title Complete dictionary of scientific biography.

Dictionary of Scientific Biography

The Formation of Intermediary Metabolism

Between Biology and Medicine

William Coleman

Professor William Coleman

00 The seven distinguished contributors to this volume illuminate not only the history of the biological and medical sciences but also the relationship between institutes and ideas which characterized the explosion of scientific investigation, especially in Germany. Besides William Coleman and Frederic L. Holmes, they include Robert G. Frank, Jr., Timothy Lenoir, John E. Lesch, Kathryn M. Olesko, and Arlene M. Tuchman. Scientific investigation was not new to the nineteenth century, but it was during that period that it began to be carried out on a scale large enough to become crucial to the welfare of nations. Much remains to be learned about how the forms of organization characteristic of the modern investigative enterprise originated. This book explores such questions in relation to one of the dominant experimental sciences of the century, physiology. Each author shows, through the examination of a specific institute or a specific subject, that the interplay between research, pedagogy, personal vision, and state or public interests can be studied to particular advantage in localized settings. The seven distinguished contributors to this volume illuminate not only the history of the biological and medical sciences but also the relationship between institutes and ideas which characterized the explosion of scientific investigation, especially in Germany. Besides William Coleman and Frederic L. Holmes, they include Robert G. Frank, Jr., Timothy Lenoir, John E. Lesch, Kathryn M. Olesko, and Arlene M. Tuchman. Scientific investigation was not new to the nineteenth century, but it was during that period that it began to be carried out on a scale large enough to become crucial to the welfare of nations. Much remains to be learned about how the forms of organization characteristic of the modern investigative enterprise originated. This book explores such questions in relation to one of the dominant experimental sciences of the century, physiology. Each author shows, through the examination of a specific institute or a specific subject, that the interplay between research, pedagogy, personal vision, and state or public interests can be studied to particular advantage in localized settings.

Experimental Physiology in Nineteenth-century Medicine

The Investigative Enterprise

Provides information on the history of science through articles on the professional lives of scientists. All periods of science from classical antiquity to modern times are represented.

Frederic Lawrence Holmes

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