Our DNA
heritage goes on the block
An archive that sheds light on
a glorious period in British science is up for sale and could
be broken up, reports Brenda Maddox
A unique archive of British scientific
documents could soon return home from California. That is, if
any British library or collector can meet the price. Christie's, New York, is seeking upwards of £1 ·3 million
($2 ·2 million)from its forthcoming auction of the Jeremy
Norman Archive of Molecular Biology.
Jeremy Norman is a 55-year-old scholarly book dealer whose specialty
is scientific and medical manuscripts. He has assembled the collection
over the past few years, paying large sums to Nobel laureates
such as Max Perutz and Sir Aaron Klug. The Norman collection,
housed in his private library in a suburb of San Francisco, also
includes material by or relating to other major names in molecular
biology such as Francis Crick, James Watson, Dr Maurice Wilkins,
Lawrence Bragg, Raymond Gosling, Dorothy Hodgkin and Sven Furberg.
When Norman's agent was scouring
Britain a few years ago, the British Historical Manuscripts Commission
was dismayed to see the original papers of work done in Britain
and financed by public funds passing overseas into private hands.
Last June, in an article on the Norman archive, the journal Nature
quoted Klug's defence of his sale. As past president of the Royal
Society, Klug might have been expected to leave his papers to
a British library or to the institution where he has worked since
the 1960s, the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular
Biology at Cambridge.
However, Klug said he''had been given assurances that the Norman
collection is intended to finally be donated to a major academic
institu tion in the United States where they would b securely
kept and free access be given to researchers''. Nature also reported
that Norman insisted that his collection would never be traded.
But now it is to go on the Manhattan auction block on April 25.
The date of the sale is no accident. April 25 marks the 50th
anniversary of the publication in Nature of the paper by James
Watson and Francis Crick announcing the discovery of the double
helix of DNA. Considered the greatest discovery in biology since
Darwin, the event will also be celebrated with a banquet on April
23 in London, sponsored by the Royal Society, the Medical Research
Council and Nature .
What seems to have changed Norman's mind, according to Francis
Walgren of Christie's, is that he became''excited by the idea
of a sale and doing it on the anniversary''. Also, the responsibility
of holding such an important collection seems to have''weighed
on him''.
The catalogue for the sale, which will be ready in about three
weeks, will carry a scholarly introduction by Norman tracing the
historical background of the study of genetics, X-ray crystallography,
viruses and protein structure. It will also make clear the provenance
of each of the letters and documents. Some of the correspondents
may be surprised to see where their old letters have ended up.
Considerable interest at the sale will go to materials held under
the name of the late Rosalind Franklin. Her April 1953 paper on
DNA structure, written at King's College, London, with Raymond
Gosling, also appeared in the Nature issue being commemorated.
At the time of publication it was an embarrassment to the heads
of both the Cavendish and King's laboratories that the experimental
work that led to Watson's and Crick's discovery of the double
helix at the Cavendish had been done, mainly by Franklin, at a
rival institution, King's.
Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel prize for the
DNA discovery in 1962. Franklin, who died in 1958, was not eligible,
for the prize is never given posthumously.
However, in recent years, as the facts of Watson's and Crick's quiet knowledge of her work have been revealed, she has been
belatedly recognised as a co-discoverer of the double helix. (She
has also become a feminist icon as an example of a gifted woman
overlooked by the misogynist scientific establishment.)
Norman holds a fair amount of original
Franklin letters, notes and other documents. He estimates that
it is ''approximately equal in quantity and quality to the other
primary archive of her scientific papers at Churchill College,
Cambridge''.
Will Churchill College bid for the Franklin archive? Christie's hopes not''to dismember''the Norman collection. However,
it may consider selling segments separately and values its Franklin
holdings at £610,000. The Wellcome Trust is another possible
buyer -perhaps for the entire collection. Last year, it reportedly
paid £1 ·8 million for the papers of Francis Crick,
who is now at the Salk Institute in California. The Heritage Lottery
contributed £900,000 to the purchase. Thanks to the Perutz
papers, the Norman archive sheds new light on the controversy
surrounding the discovery of the double helix. Perutz, who was
at the Cavendish at the time, was deeply stung by the suggestion
in Watson's best-selling book, The Double Helix ,published in
1968, that in February 1953 h had improperly shown a Medical Council
Research report containing Franklin's data to his friends. Perutz
wrote dozens of letters trying to get support from fellow scientists
to show that he had not volunteered the report but merely handed
it over when asked, and that it was not marked confidential.
Sleuths of the true facts behind
the discovery will also be intrigued by the Norman collection's
early drafts of The Double Helix .Then entitled Honest Jim ,the
manuscript drew angry demands for changes from those candidly
mentioned, notably Wilkins, Crick and their American rival, Linus
Pauling. ''Hopefully'',as a Christie's spokesman says,''this material
will end up in a more permanent home''. He acknowledged that''back
in the UK''was probably the ideal place.
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady
of DNA by Brenda Maddox (HarperCollins)is available in hardback
for £18.
Advance orders can also be taken for the paperback,
published in April for £7 ·99. To order either title,
plus £1 ·99 p&p per order, please call Telegraph
Books Direct on
0870 155 7222
By building things one atom at a time you create
a myriad
goods possessing amazing properties
5 feb
2003


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