He gave a lecture at the University of Houston titled "My Life with DNA"
It was quite good. He's a funny old man.
Some of the notable moments:
He's a Dem! :bounce: He said his mom was quite devoted to the Democratic party, his dad was a repub but he was quickly converted :evilgrin:
At one point, he compared
Craig Venter's attempt to privatize human genome information to Hitler's attempt at world conquest... :wow:
He scoffed at those who believe recombinant DNA technology is dangerous (Made me think of
this thread :) ) however he did not address the issue of GM crops much to my disappointment. He briefly addressed ethics issues (such as discrimination based on your genotype, remember GATAGA?) but all in all he didn't discuss it as much as I had hoped. In a nutshell, he believes the benefits reaped from rDNA technology far outweigh any (perceived) danger or future unknown risks.
He discussed Rosalind Franklin for a while. He said the whole thing boiled down to Rosalind's passion for trying to deduce the structure of DNA from the crystal structure using Fourier transforms, while Watson and Crick were determined to use actual physical models (sorta like legos, but for molecules) to get a "fit" with the data. Rosalind refused to accept (at first) that the structure was helical in nature (I assume her numbers weren't showing a helix), but she later correctly deduced the structure. Watson said she should have been on that first paper, but it was too late by then. He also said she deserved a share of the Nobel prize. He spoke very highly of her. He also mentioned that she may have had Asperger's syndrome, based on the way she interacted socially. Apparently she had huge problems interacting with others. Asperger's was not recognized as an illness until recently.
Since yesterday was Dr. Watson's birthday, the whole auditorium stood up and sang him "Happy Birthday" at the end of the lecture. It was quite a scene!
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