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Herman Kalckar
Peter Pauling was a prominent crystallographer and the son of world-renowned chemist Linus Pauling. In 1952, Peter began his PhD research at the Cavendish Lab and quickly befriended James Watson. Their conversations revolved around two things: women and the state of Peter’s father’s research. In the spirit of friendship and scientific openness, Peter shared his father’s letters with his colleagues. This is how Crick and Watson learned about Linus Pauling’s research on DNA. In fact, Crick and Watson returned to DNA research at the beginning of 1953 in large part because they wanted to discover its structure before Pauling. Therefore, Peter’s letters arguably played a pivotal role in Crick and Watson’s success: if Peter hadn’t tipped them off, Linus Pauling might have beat them to the double helix. Thus, Crick and Watson’s relationship with Peter Pauling raises many of the same thorny ethical questions as their collaboration with Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin.
Peter Pauling Quotes in The Double Helix
The The Double Helix quotes below are all either spoken by Peter Pauling or refer to Peter Pauling . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 21
Quotes
It was from his father. In addition to routine family-gossip was the long-feared news that Linus now had a structure for DNA. No details were given of what he was up to, and so each time the letter passed between Francis and me the greater was our frustration. Francis then began pacing up and down the room thinking aloud, hoping that in a great intellectual fervor he could reconstruct what Linus might have done. As long as Linus had not told us the answer, we should get equal credit if we announced it at the same time.
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Chapter 24
Quotes
[Maurice Wilkins] emphasized that he wanted to put off more model building until Rosy was gone, six weeks from then. Francis seized the occasion to ask Maurice whether he would mind if we started to play about with DNA models. When Maurice’s slow answer emerged as no, he wouldn’t mind, my pulse rate returned to normal. For even if the answer had been yes, our model building would have gone ahead.
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Peter Pauling Quotes in The Double Helix
The The Double Helix quotes below are all either spoken by Peter Pauling or refer to Peter Pauling . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 21
Quotes
It was from his father. In addition to routine family-gossip was the long-feared news that Linus now had a structure for DNA. No details were given of what he was up to, and so each time the letter passed between Francis and me the greater was our frustration. Francis then began pacing up and down the room thinking aloud, hoping that in a great intellectual fervor he could reconstruct what Linus might have done. As long as Linus had not told us the answer, we should get equal credit if we announced it at the same time.
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Chapter 24
Quotes
[Maurice Wilkins] emphasized that he wanted to put off more model building until Rosy was gone, six weeks from then. Francis seized the occasion to ask Maurice whether he would mind if we started to play about with DNA models. When Maurice’s slow answer emerged as no, he wouldn’t mind, my pulse rate returned to normal. For even if the answer had been yes, our model building would have gone ahead.
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