Title:

Letter from Fritz Lipmann to Francis Crick

Creator:

Lipmann, Fritz (Fritz Albert), 1899-1986

Recipient:

Crick, Francis, 1916-2004

Date:

27 November 1961

Description:

In this letter the biochemist Fritz Lipmann reported on work on the coding problem undertaken by fellow Nobel Laureate Severo Ochoa at New York University School of Medicine. Crick's contention that the code was degenerate, i.e. that more than one triplet could code for an amino acid, was borne out during the next few years, and Lipmann's doubts in this regard, expressed in his letter, were disproved. The letter also demonstrated that by 1961, most researchers had abandoned the idea that the code might be overlapping, that is, that a triplet might share a base with both the preceding and succeeding triplet.

Original Repository:

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

Location:

Box: 10. Folder: PP/CRI/D/1/1/12

Rights:

Reproduced with permission of Stephen Lipmann.

Genre:

Letters (correspondence)

Subject:

Genetic Code

Format:

Text

Extent:

2 pages

Relation:

Letter from Francis Crick to Fritz Lipmann, 1961

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:

SCBBBV

NLM ID:

101584582X10

Profiles Collection:

The Francis Crick Papers

Shareable Link:

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/101584582X10

Story Section:

Deciphering the Genetic Code, 1958-1966