Hall Kersten
Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci. 2011 Jun;42(2):119-28. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2010.11.018. Epub 2011 Feb 5.
Famously, James Watson credited the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA in 1953 to an X-ray diffraction photograph taken by Rosalind Franklin. Historians of molecular biology have long puzzled over a remarkably similar photograph taken two years earlier by the physicist and pioneer of protein structure William T. Astbury. They have suggested that Astbury's failure to capitalize on the photograph to solve DNA's structure was due either to his being too much of a physicist, with too little interest in or knowledge of biology, or to his being misled by an erroneous theoretical model of the gene. Drawing on previously unpublished archival sources, this paper offers a new analysis of Astbury's relationship to the problem of DNA's structure, emphasizing a previously overlooked element in Astbury's thinking: his concept of biological specificity.
众所周知，詹姆斯·沃森将1953年DNA双螺旋结构的发现归功于罗莎琳德·富兰克林拍摄的一张X射线衍射照片。分子生物学史学家长期以来一直对物理学家、蛋白质结构先驱威廉·T·阿斯特伯里两年前拍摄的一张极为相似的照片感到困惑。他们认为，阿斯特伯里未能利用这张照片解决DNA的结构问题，要么是因为他过于像一名物理学家，对生物学兴趣寥寥且所知甚少，要么是因为他被一个错误的基因理论模型误导。本文利用此前未发表的档案资料，对阿斯特伯里与DNA结构问题的关系进行了新的分析，强调了阿斯特伯里思想中一个此前被忽视的元素：他的生物特异性概念。
