13, [1] pp. With 4 illustrations, including a depiction of the doubld-helix. Unbound, saddle-stitched. 21x13.8 cm. (8½x5½"). Custom chemise & folding cloth case.
The famous three-paper offprint on DNA, an important association copy of the very rare offprint from Nature Magazine, Vol. 171, April 25, 1953, presenting Watson and Crick's monumental discovery of the structure of DNA, generally considered the most important biological discovery of the 20th century. This copy with inkstamp of J.D. Dunitz to top corner of first page, along with number 346. Jack David Dunitz (born 29 March 1923, Glasgow), a British chemist and widely known chemical crystallographer at Caltech in 1952, was visiting the Dorothy Hodgkin laboratory at that time, and Hodgkin advised Rosalind Franklin to meet with him about possible "space groups" in the DNA molecule. Franklin declined the advice, feeling "insulted" (as related by Vistor McElheny in "Watson and DNA," 2003), thus missing out on the opportunity to more fully develop the theory for which Watson and Crick were to win the Nobel Prize. Watson said at a lecture many years later, in reference to Franklin's missed opportunity, "If she had used it, I wouldn't be giving this lecture" as a Nobel Prize winner. Whether this is a presentation copy to Dunitz from one of the authors cannot be verified. "We used to think the future was in the stars. Now we know it is in our genes" (James Watson). Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962 for "their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Other contributors to these first articles were Maurice Wilkins, A.R. Stokes, H.R. Wilson, R.G. Gosling, W.E. Seeds, and of course Rosalind Franklin. OCLC/WorldCat lists only one copy of this offprint, at the University of Sheffield.