Seeing Further by Bryson Bill

Author:Bryson, Bill [Bryson, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Non Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

LEGACIES

Bragg dedicated his last years to restoring the RI, which had gone through a fallow period, to the glory days of Faraday or indeed his own father. Apart from sorting out its finances and establishing a first-class programme of research, he devoted most of his own energies to promoting science literacy. With enormous enjoyment and a knack for the felicitous analogy, he launched a year-round programme of lectures for schools, accompanied by the most spectacular demonstrations his inventive mind could conjure. Not a man for political activism, he took every opportunity through lecturing and broadcasting to present his vision of science as a benign, humanising activity that transcended class, gender and national boundaries. The RI continues this work today.

The triumphant successes of Cambridge molecular biology had been carried out largely in a ‘temporary’ shed outside the Cavendish Laboratory, known as The Hut. In 1962 they moved to the purpose-built Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, which has continued to expand ever since. Max Perutz chose to be chairman of the lab, not director as was usual in MRC units. He pursued a policy of attracting good people, giving them a share in the resources of the lab, and letting them get on with their research with a minimum of interference while he got on with his. The model also included more or less compulsory tea and coffee breaks in the communal canteen, where even the starriest prima donna would sit down next to the most junior graduate student and discuss science.

It paid off. The tally of Nobel Prize-winners steadily rose, with Fred Sanger (his second), Cesar Milstein, Georges Köhler, Aaron Klug, John Walker, Sydney Brenner, Robert Horvitz, John Sulston and Venkatramen Ramakrishnan joining the list. In 1993 Sulston (FRS 1986) moved to become founding director of the nearby Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Its major role in the international Human Genome Project, which published the complete human sequence in 2003, grew directly from Sulston’s work at the LMB on sequencing the genome of the nematode worm, work supported by Jim Watson in his role as head of the US Office of Genome Research. Both the LMB and the Sanger Institute continue as international centres of molecular biology, while labs throughout the world are peopled with those who imbibed the LMB philosophy as young researchers. Sulston, supported by the Wellcome Trust, has continued to champion the free availability of biological information and oppose ‘land grabs’ in the genome for private gain.20

Perutz retired as chairman of the LMB in 1979, but never gave up research. In his latter years he became a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, writing witty and lucid essay-reviews on science and scientists. Though he abhorred political extremes of both right and left, he shared Bernal’s view of science as a force for good and set out to counter the anti-science movement with his 1989 collection of essays Is Science Necessary?21 His main concern was to promote health and well-being in developing countries, and to

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