The Man in the Monkeynut Coat
William Astbury and How Wool Wove a Forgotten Road to the Double-Helix
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9 476 Ft
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Estimated delivery time: In stock at the publisher, but not at Prospero's office. Delivery time approx. 3-5 weeks.
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 2 August 2022
- ISBN 9780198766964
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages272 pages
- Size 215x135x140 mm
- Weight 366 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 24 b/w illustrations 225
Categories
Short description:
Tells the story of the English physicist and molecular biologist William T. Astbury and how his work forms a previously untold chapter in the story of the discovery of the structure of DNA.
MoreLong description:
Sir Isaac Newton once declared that his momentous discoveries were only made thanks to having 'stood on the shoulders of giants'. The same might also be said of the scientists James Watson and Francis Crick. Their discovery of the structure of DNA was, without doubt, one of the biggest scientific landmarks in history and, thanks largely to the success of Watson's best-selling memoir 'The Double Helix', there might seem to be little new to say about this story.
But much remains to be said about the particular 'giants' on whose shoulders Watson and Crick stood. Of these, the crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, whose famous X-ray diffraction photograph known as 'Photo 51' provided Watson and Crick with a vital clue, is now well recognised. Far less well known is the physicist William T. Astbury who, working at Leeds in the 1930s on the structure of wool for the local textile industry, pioneered the use of X-ray crystallography to study biological fibres. In so doing, he not only made the very first studies of the structure of DNA culminating in a photo almost identical to Franklin's 'Photo 51', but also founded the new science of 'molecular biology'.
Yet whilst Watson and Crick won the Nobel Prize, Astbury has largely been forgotten. The Man in the Monkeynut Coat tells the story of this neglected pioneer, showing not only how it was thanks to him that Watson and Crick were not left empty-handed, but also how his ideas transformed biology leaving a legacy which is still felt today.
Construction of the Watson-Crick model of DNA in the middle of the last century was a key event in scientific history. The surrounding controversies and the larger-than-life players have been widely described but continue to fascinate. By focussing on the lesser known figure of William Astbury, a pioneer in X-ray diffraction studies of biological fibres, this readable account brings a fresh interpretation and new insight. Astbury, widely regarded as a founder of molecular biology, is also shown to have had an understanding of protein structure that was ahead of its time, an understanding that helped create new textiles and a 'monkeynut' coat.
Table of Contents:
A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words
Germany Has Much to Teach us
A Keen Young Man
Into the Wilderness
The X-Ray Vatican
A Pile of Pennies
Avery's Bombshell
Nunc Dimittis
One Grand Leap ... Too Far
The Road Not Taken
The Man in the Monkeynut Coat
