James Watson's Third Memoir: Avoid Boring People (2007)
For a number of years, Nobel Laureate James Watson, now in his 90s, has been on most Least Popular lists because of his views on race and intelligence.
That understood, I ran across his third volume of memoirs, Avoid Boring People (2007) and read it recently. Famously, Watson wrote his first memoir, The Double Helix, in 1968, and his memoir of the later 50s and 1960s, Genes Girls Gamow in 2001. His 2007 book covers his whole life again, from childhood until sometime after he stepped down from Harvard to lead Cold Spring Harbor full time in 1976 (having served at Harvard 1955-1976). He was pushed into full retirement from CSH in 2007 due to racial remarks.
PBS has just run the new documentary American Masters / Decoding Watson, in January 2019.
Most Amazing Thing
I found the book entertaining, bogging down mostly in a few later sections where he detailed minor steps in the career of a postdoc I'd never heard of. The most amazing thing was the people I had heard of - many of whom he met very early in his career, before they or he were famous (or nearly as famous). Many of these characters are in Horace Freeland Judson's The Eighth Day of Creation, a history of molecular biology from the 1940s to the 1960s and early 1970s, which came out in 1978, when I was early in a college biology major. I still have the hardcover I bought then. These names include Gunther Stent, Seymour Benzer, Salvador Luria, Sydney Brenner, Leo Szilard, most or all of whom he knew before discovering DNA in 1953 at age 25.
Snippets
Watson's acerbic wit (or worldview) is in evidence throughout the book. I've jotted down a few by page - (259) Edward Tatum, head of CSH before Watson, was a "plodder" kept aloft by coauthors or students; (255) The Stanford Biochemistry Depart is "Arthur Kornberg's ever self-congratulatory biochemistry department," (234) He kept records of lawyer's bills preceding The Double Helix ($5.75 for postage), a nice picture of his office on p. 219; (207) Trying to lure Hubel & Weisel, the vision pioneers, from HMS to Harvard University; (196) Still annoyed about not getting a raise in the early 1960s; (266) How he married a much younger wife (he was about 40, she 19); (276) He buys Syntex stock on the recomendation of Carl Djerassi, the inventor of the OCP; (277) Graduate students could avoid the Vietnam draft only if they switched from biochemistry to cancer research; (309) His resignation letter from Harvard to pursue CSH full time; (303) He shows up at a party with Truman Capote; (316) Some sharp remarks on chased-out Harvard president Larry Summers (nothing distinguished his time in office like the leaving of it...a nod to Macbeth). Additionally, Watson was a cousin to Orson Welles.
Watson ends each chapter with five or six "rules for living," some grand, some quotidian. Fitting the pun, he uses "Avoid Boring People" as a rule twice, the first time to avoid conversation, the second time to avoid yourself being dull to others.
An open access article on the path to DNA, Nature, here.
___
Personal notes.
I saw Watson once, when he was a visiting professor at Stanford Med School in the 1980s. I saw Crick at least once or twice and probably heard him lecture on his theory of dreams in the 1980s.
I heard a lecture from Gunter Stent (mentioned several times in Watson's book here) one evening in college. I loved Stent's book Paradoxes of Progress (1981) and still have an original copy. Later, I got a copy of Stent's little-known autobiography Nazis Women and Molecular Biology, much of which is about his wartime experiences in Berlin in the 1940s and just after. My copy is signed to "Bea and Gunther", likely Gunter Steinberg, a schoolmate of Stent's in Berlin who also ended up living in California, like Stent. Stent lived 1924-2008.
I was wandering Harvard Square around 2007 and saw a poster that recently ejected president Larry Summers was giving a talk on campus; jotted down the building and room; spent an hour listening to him talk about his Harvard presidency and the leaving of it in an audience of about 15.
____
Watson mentions a number of books. One he has mentioned before is Schrodinger's What Is Life. He was influenced by Unresting Cells by his U. Chicago physiology professor R.W. Gerard. He also mentions "Christ stopped at Eboli," by Italian concentration camp survivor Carlo Levi (no relation, or very distant, to Primo Levi).
Unresting Cells was published in 1941 and reprinted without updates in 1949; Gerard mentions research during the war years was limited. It was also reprinted in 1961, without changes. The genetics chapter, as young Watson read it in college, is in the cloud here.
That understood, I ran across his third volume of memoirs, Avoid Boring People (2007) and read it recently. Famously, Watson wrote his first memoir, The Double Helix, in 1968, and his memoir of the later 50s and 1960s, Genes Girls Gamow in 2001. His 2007 book covers his whole life again, from childhood until sometime after he stepped down from Harvard to lead Cold Spring Harbor full time in 1976 (having served at Harvard 1955-1976). He was pushed into full retirement from CSH in 2007 due to racial remarks.
PBS has just run the new documentary American Masters / Decoding Watson, in January 2019.
My favorite movie about science and one of my favorites in the overall biopic and documentary category is Race for the Double Helix (also released as Life Story), a 1987 BBC film starring Jeff Goldblum as Watson. It's not available as a conventional DVD or commercial streaming. IT's not even available as a used VHS on Amazon. A fuzzy DVD is available at the "ioffer" website (here). At least in 2018, the movie streamed fuzzily in two parts here and here. I make the effort to list all this since - it's one of my favorite movies, period.Back to Watson. In his third memoir, Avoid Boring People, he simply goes quickly (a few pages) over some of the years he devoted much more text to in Double Helix and Genes Girls Gamow. Discovering DNA in 1953 gets around 5-10 pages in Avoid Boring People.
Most Amazing Thing
I found the book entertaining, bogging down mostly in a few later sections where he detailed minor steps in the career of a postdoc I'd never heard of. The most amazing thing was the people I had heard of - many of whom he met very early in his career, before they or he were famous (or nearly as famous). Many of these characters are in Horace Freeland Judson's The Eighth Day of Creation, a history of molecular biology from the 1940s to the 1960s and early 1970s, which came out in 1978, when I was early in a college biology major. I still have the hardcover I bought then. These names include Gunther Stent, Seymour Benzer, Salvador Luria, Sydney Brenner, Leo Szilard, most or all of whom he knew before discovering DNA in 1953 at age 25.
Snippets
Watson's acerbic wit (or worldview) is in evidence throughout the book. I've jotted down a few by page - (259) Edward Tatum, head of CSH before Watson, was a "plodder" kept aloft by coauthors or students; (255) The Stanford Biochemistry Depart is "Arthur Kornberg's ever self-congratulatory biochemistry department," (234) He kept records of lawyer's bills preceding The Double Helix ($5.75 for postage), a nice picture of his office on p. 219; (207) Trying to lure Hubel & Weisel, the vision pioneers, from HMS to Harvard University; (196) Still annoyed about not getting a raise in the early 1960s; (266) How he married a much younger wife (he was about 40, she 19); (276) He buys Syntex stock on the recomendation of Carl Djerassi, the inventor of the OCP; (277) Graduate students could avoid the Vietnam draft only if they switched from biochemistry to cancer research; (309) His resignation letter from Harvard to pursue CSH full time; (303) He shows up at a party with Truman Capote; (316) Some sharp remarks on chased-out Harvard president Larry Summers (nothing distinguished his time in office like the leaving of it...a nod to Macbeth). Additionally, Watson was a cousin to Orson Welles.
Watson ends each chapter with five or six "rules for living," some grand, some quotidian. Fitting the pun, he uses "Avoid Boring People" as a rule twice, the first time to avoid conversation, the second time to avoid yourself being dull to others.
An open access article on the path to DNA, Nature, here.
___
Personal notes.
I saw Watson once, when he was a visiting professor at Stanford Med School in the 1980s. I saw Crick at least once or twice and probably heard him lecture on his theory of dreams in the 1980s.
I heard a lecture from Gunter Stent (mentioned several times in Watson's book here) one evening in college. I loved Stent's book Paradoxes of Progress (1981) and still have an original copy. Later, I got a copy of Stent's little-known autobiography Nazis Women and Molecular Biology, much of which is about his wartime experiences in Berlin in the 1940s and just after. My copy is signed to "Bea and Gunther", likely Gunter Steinberg, a schoolmate of Stent's in Berlin who also ended up living in California, like Stent. Stent lived 1924-2008.
I was wandering Harvard Square around 2007 and saw a poster that recently ejected president Larry Summers was giving a talk on campus; jotted down the building and room; spent an hour listening to him talk about his Harvard presidency and the leaving of it in an audience of about 15.
____
Watson mentions a number of books. One he has mentioned before is Schrodinger's What Is Life. He was influenced by Unresting Cells by his U. Chicago physiology professor R.W. Gerard. He also mentions "Christ stopped at Eboli," by Italian concentration camp survivor Carlo Levi (no relation, or very distant, to Primo Levi).
Unresting Cells was published in 1941 and reprinted without updates in 1949; Gerard mentions research during the war years was limited. It was also reprinted in 1961, without changes. The genetics chapter, as young Watson read it in college, is in the cloud here.
