"I might say that it reached a very pleasant climax at a conference that Linus Pauling
had arranged to take place in Pasadena in 1953. Nowadays we would call it a workshop,
on the structure of biologically important molecules: it probably wasn't attended
by more than 25 or 30 people...The conference was strictly limited to structure; but
in that respect, it was quite spectacular. It included Watson and Crick's account
of the structure of DNA, solved six months earlier..." Max Perutz. Interview with Horace Freeland Judson December 1970.
"Compared with all previous B patterns that Franklin had obtained, these two pictures
were vivid, No. 51 especially so. The overall pattern was a huge blurry diamond. The
top and bottom points of the diamond were capped by heavily exposed, dark arcs. From
the bull's-eye, a striking arrangement of short, horizontal smears stepped out along
the diagonals in the shape of an X or a maltese cross. The pattern shouted helix." Horace Freeland Judson. The Eighth Day of Creation. 1979.
"Max is rather silent, but to spend the days chewing on a problem, and writing and
erasing things on the blackboard with him, is terribly exciting. He is unusually cultured
by American standards. You know, most American scientists are duds; they never have
read a sensible book." Salvador Luria. The Eighth Day of Creation. 1979.
"The glib assumption that he could have come up with it - Pauling just didn't try.
He can't really have spent five minutes on the problem himself. He can't have looked
closely at the details of what they did publish on base pairing, in that paper; almost
all the details are simply wrong" Maurice Wilkins. The Eighth Day of Creation. 1979.
"...the whole business was like a child's toy that you could buy at the dime store,
all built in this wonderful way that you could explain in Life magazine so that really a five-year-old can understand what's going on...This was
the greatest surprise for everyone." Max Delbruck. The Eighth Day of Creation. 1979.
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