The Information - James Gleick [225]
♦ SOME OF THE PHYSICISTS NOW TURNING TO BIOLOGY: Henry Quastler, ed., Essays on the Use of Information Theory in Biology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953).
♦ “A LINEAR CODED TAPE OF INFORMATION”: Sidney Dancoff to Henry Quastler, 31 July 1950, quoted in Lily E. Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life: A History of the Genetic Code (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), 119.
♦ NUMBER OF BITS REPRESENTED BY A SINGLE BACTERIUM: Henry Linschitz, “The Information Content of a Bacterial Cell,” in Henry Quastler, ed., Essays on the Use of Information Theory in Biology, 252.
♦ “HYPOTHETICAL INSTRUCTIONS TO BUILD AN ORGANISM”: Sidney Dancoff and Henry Quastler, “The Information Content and Error Rate of Living Things,” in Henry Quastler, ed., Essays on the Use of Information Theory in Biology, 264.
♦ “THE ESSENTIAL COMPLEXITY OF A SINGLE CELL”: Ibid., 270.
♦ AN ODD LITTLE LETTER: Boris Ephrussi, Urs Leopold, J. D. Watson, and J. J. Weigle, “Terminology in Bacterial Genetics,” Nature 171 (18 April 1953): 701.
♦ MEANT AS A JOKE: Cf. Sahotra Sarkar, Molecular Models of Life (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005); Lily E. Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life?, 58; Harriett Ephrussi-Taylor to Joshua Lederberg, 3 September 1953, and Lederberg annotation 30 April 2004, in Lederberg papers, http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB/A/J/R/R/ (accessed 22 January 2009); and James D. Watson, Genes, Girls, and Gamow: After the Double Helix (New York: Knopf, 2002), 12.
♦ GENES MIGHT LIE IN A DIFFERENT SUBSTANCE: In retrospect, everyone understood that this had been proven in 1944, by Oswald Avery at Rockefeller University. Not many researchers were convinced at the time, however.
♦ “ONE OF THE MOST COY STATEMENTS”: Gunther S. Stent, “DNA,” Daedalus 99 (1970): 924.
♦ “IT HAS NOT ESCAPED OUR NOTICE”: James D. Watson and Francis Crick, “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” Nature 171 (1953): 737.
♦ “IT FOLLOWS THAT IN A LONG MOLECULE”: James D. Watson and Francis Crick, “Genetical Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid,” Nature 171 (1953): 965.
♦ “DEAR DRS. WATSON & CRICK”: George Gamow to James D. Watson and Francis Crick, 8 July 1953, quoted in Lily E. Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life?, 131. Reprinted by permission of R. Igor Gamow.
♦ “AS IN THE BREAKING OF ENEMY MESSAGES”: George Gamow to E. Chargaff, 6 May 1954, Ibid., 141.
♦ “BY PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL BUSH TELEGRAPH”: Gunther S. Stent, “DNA,” 924.
♦ “PEOPLE DIDN’T NECESSARILY BELIEVE IN THE CODE”: Francis Crick, interview with Horace Freeland Judson, 20 November 1975, in Horace Freeland Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 233.
♦ “A LONG NUMBER WRITTEN IN A FOUR-DIGITAL SYSTEM”: George Gamow, “Possible Relation Between Deoxyribonucleic Acid and Protein Structures,” Nature 173 (1954): 318.
♦ “BETWEEN THE COMPLEX MACHINERY IN A LIVING CELL”: Douglas R. Hofstadter, “The Genetic Code: Arbitrary?” (March 1982), in Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 671.
♦ “THE NUCLEUS OF A LIVING CELL IS A STOREHOUSE OF INFORMATION”: George Gamow, “Information Transfer in the Living Cell,” Scientific American 193, no. 10 (October 1955): 70.
♦ UNNECESSARY IF SOME TRIPLETS MADE “SENSE”: Francis Crick, “General Nature of the Genetic Code for Proteins,” Nature 192 (30 December 1961): 1227.
♦ “THE SEQUENCE OF NUCLEOTIDES AS AN INFINITE MESSAGE”: Solomon W. Golomb, Basil Gordon, and Lloyd R. Welch, “Comma-Free Codes,” Canadian Journal of Mathematics 10 (1958): 202–209, quoted in Lily E. Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life?, 171.
♦ “ONCE ‘INFORMATION’ HAS PASSED INTO PROTEIN”: Francis Crick, “On Protein Synthesis,” Symposium of the Society for Experimental Biology 12 (1958): 152; Cf. Francis Crick, “Central Dogma of Molecular Biology,” Nature 227 (1970): 561–63; and Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 20–21.
♦ “THE COMPLETE DESCRIPTION