Francis Crick: I wasn't aware of Chargaff's rules when he said them, but the effect on me was quite
electric because I realized immediately that if you had this sort of scheme that John
Griffith was proposing, of adenine being paired with thymine, and guanine being paired
with cytosine, then you should get Chargaff's rules.
I was very excited, but I didn't actually tell Chargaff because it was something I
was doing with John Griffith. There was a sort of musical comedy effect where I forgot
what the bases were and I had to go to the library to check, and I went back to John
Griffith to find out which places he said. Low and behold, it turned out that John
Griffith's ideas fitted in with Chargaff's rules!
This was very exciting, and we thought "ah ha!" and we realized - I mean what anyone
who is familiar with the history of science ought to realize - that when you have
one-to-one ratios, it means things go to together. And how on Earth no one pointed
out this simple fact in those years, I don't know.
