If you are interested in the history of science. Or put another way, how science can work when it is allowed to, check out this wonderful site: ‘Molecular Tinkering: How Edinburgh changed the face of molecular biology’.
I first became aware of ‘Edinburgh’ and its role in molecular biology by accident. In the late 1970’s I spent three months here doing a psychiatry elective, on the unit of Prof Bob Kendell. I stayed in self-catering University accommodation through the summer, knowing nobody, spending most of my free time tramping around the city on foot. Not always bored. There was a motley crew of people staying in the small hall, and one was a biologist from China. I had never met anybody from this far away and mysterious place. Of course, mostly I asked about barefoot doctors and the like, and questions that you would not now use your mobile phone to ask. No Alexa then. But I wondered why he was here. Molecular biology, he explained. Now, I could recite the story Jim Watson told about Watson and Crick, and even mention a few names who followed. But no more than a handful. ‘Recombinant DNA’ might have passed my lips, but please do not ask me to explain it. But from him, I learned something special has awoken. And for me it was literally a couple more years before the waves of this second revolution broke on the shores of MRC Clinical Training Fellowship applications.
A sample:
Throughout the 20th century film editors worked by identifying key scenes in their film reels, snipping precise frames and re-joining them to create a new narrative. This is exactly how the Murrays wanted to work with the long molecules of DNA. Restriction enzymes would be the editor’s scissors, making the cuts. As well as doing the cutting, the enzymes would be the editor’s eyes: recognising the precise frame at which to snip.
Or if you ever doubt that the space for discovery is infinite, listen to this from Noreen Murray:
“Looking back, it is amazing that Ken and I were the only people in the UK in the late 60s and early 70s to notice the potential of restriction enzymes.”
Or this, for a definition of what research leadership is all about:
Waddington had a real knack for selecting and recruiting interesting but often unproven biologists.