Title:

Letter from Francis Crick to G. A. Rodley

Creator:

Crick, Francis, 1916-2004

Recipient:

Rodley, G. A.

Date:

11 May 1977

Description:

As Crick noted in this letter, the details of the structure of DNA were not yet conclusively established in 1977, beyond the base pairing and the antiparallel arrangement of the sugar-phosphate backbones, more than two decades after Watson and Crick proposed that it was a double helix. In the absence of definitive experimental proof, some researchers continued to suggest alternative structures. In this instance, Crick responded to an argument by Rodley that the two chains of DNA were straight rather than helical. He found such a structure unlikely, but nonetheless suggested how experimental proof for it might be produced, if at all.

Original Repository:

The Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. Francis Harry Compton Crick Papers

Location:

Box: 23. Folder: PP/CRI/D/2/18

Rights:

Reproduced with permission of the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. and http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/

Genre:

Letters (correspondence)

Subject:

DNA

Format:

Text

Extent:

3 pages

Language:

English

Legacy Source Citation:

Original Repository. Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. Francis Harry Compton Crick Papers. 11646. URL. http://archives.wellcome.ac.uk/

Legacy ID:

SCBBQK

NLM ID:

101584582X234

Profiles Collection:

The Francis Crick Papers

Shareable Link:

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/101584582X234

Story Section:

From Molecular Biology to Neurobiology, 1976-2004