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A Century of Nature: Twenty-One Discoveries that Changed Science and the World

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1953 - Watson & Crick compromised on their famous understated sentence: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material." Crick would have elaborated on this concept. Watson was less certain the model was perfect and didn't want to dig an erroneous hole too deep.

1960 - Maiman's extremely short paper on the first laser was turned down by "Physical Review Letters," then accepted by the even more selective "Nature." Although many scientists were working on creating a machine that would work, engineers and scientists were not ready for its application. Newspaper headlines talked about "death rays," and many suggested the laser was a "solution looking for a problem."

1963 - "The accepted way of writing scientific papers gives only a veiled glimpse of the heated arguments behind the measured prose, and even then these are visible only to those who know the subject well." - Dan McKenzie commenting on the article that put the nail in the coffin opposing the modern theories of continental drift, plate tectonics and seafloor spreading. This article showed the "magnetic stripes" laid down in emerging molten rock (lava) as it created new ocean crust, documenting earth's polarity reversals over time. Wegener's ideas from 1915 were only partially right, and his uncongenial arguments and uncritical advocacy delayed tweaking and final acceptance of this theory for almost 50 years.

1970 - One of the "Central Dogmas" of Evolution is that genetic information only goes one direction. To go backward would reek of genetic transfer of acquired traits (Lamarckism). Certain viruses, however, can copy their RNA "backward" into DNA of unsuspecting hosts, thus their name "Retroviruses." Blocking the enzyme these viruses use (reverse transcriptase) is a major target for attacking HIV.

1973 - Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) should be called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). It was not because of the fear that the patients might be worried about radioactivity, where none exists. Lauterbur proposed the name "Zeugmatography" for his new technique, which also didn't catch on. His theory used the hypothesis that the orientation of the hydrogen proton might be altered by the magnetic field and used to produce 3D images of internal structures. It took a decade to work out the details.

1977 - Sanger worked out the entire genome of a virus with 5375 DNA rungs. He stated "In considering the sequence of ThetaX174 as a functional unit..." "Until this moment, research scientists had always accepted that they must necessarily be ignorant of parts of the biological problem that they studied...then the human genome, in 2000 & 2001...someday the 'transcriptome' and the 'proteome.' One day, someone will write in a paper, 'In considering the sequence of the human body as a functional unit'...That will be the sound of the crashing palace gates." - Peter Little

1980 - Drosophila development had been studied to death, but 90% of them were lethal, and some Hox genes (developmental control genes) had already been identified. Nusslein-Volhard & Wieshaus instead of limiting themselves to adults, included the larvae. They painstakingly studied 40,000 matings which opened up 90% of the genome to investigation. This showed segmental control by only 15 Hox genes. Suddenly, hoards of molecular biologists appeared to work out the molecular analysis of developmental patterns. This fusion of 2 major subspecialties has shown that the basic developmental mechanism in animals is all the same, making this paper arguably the most influential paper in its field during the 2nd half of the 20th century.

1985 - Fans of Crichton and his conspiracy theory book "State of Fear" should read this chapter on the discovery of the misnamed "ozone hole" in the Antarctic, and the painstaking science that worked out the chemistry of this phenomemon.

1985 - Buckyballs are carbon molecules with 60 carbon atoms naturally formed along with the elements and other molecules during the life cycle of stars. They consist of 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons of the carbon atom, arranged exactly like the same man-invented arrangement of shapes on the soccer ball. Despite lots of work, carbon nanotubes now look like the derivative that has the most potential use.

1997 - The Roslin Institute in Scotland cloned the first mammal. Amazingly, lamb6LL3, forever known as "Dolly" was cloned from already differentiated cells. The Roslin group did not expect the outburst of sound and fury that followed the publication of the paper. "Today it is obvious that most, if not all, mammals can be cloned from at least some adult cells, as witnessed by the reported cloning of cloned goats, pigs, cats, and rabbits...this area remains the subject of hot legal, ethical and theological debate." - Davor Solter

Twenty-one original articles from "Nature," resulting in many Nobel Prize winners. Each article is preceded by commentary from an expert in that field who has the benefit of hindsight. What an interesting book to read!

Five enthusiastic stars!

During a recent lunchtime outing, I was stunned to find this book in a pile of used books at a public library! The familiar font of the word "nature" tells me the book is related to the magazine, and YES, I find the 1938 paper by Kapitza on liquid helium study. I still remember the pure joy when I first read it: both the physics experiment and the reasoning are so beautiful and elegant!
For those who are really interested in science, this book is full of gems. How lucky I got it, for just $1. It's been in the *public* library for more than one year and still remains spotless, that, tells me another story.

Over the past century "Nature" has been the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, along with its less cosmopolitan rival, "Science." Laura Garwin has selected 21 papers published between 1920 and 2000 to illustrate both the quality of the journal and the development of science in the twentieth century. Each paper is prefaced by a short essay written by an expert in the field, outlining the background and impact of the paper. Some of these introductions cover all of the information necessary to allow someone with even a minimal high school science background to read the following paper with full understanding; others make slightly higher demands. Most of the papers are quite short. As a current reader of Nature, I can testify that Garwin et al. chose papers that are far easier to read than the average.

Is this a complete history of science in the 20th century? No, it is very selective, and reflects the fact that much of the best work in theorectical physics prior to World War II appeared in German, while more recent theoretical particle physicists have favored "Physical Review" over "Nature". You can, however, find the discovery of the neutron here, and the discovery of nuclear fission that paved the way for the atom bomb just a few years later. Plate tectonics and sea-floor spreading, pulsars and planets, DNA and T cells, buckyballs and Dolly, the cloned sheep- all are included.

This book has the richness of actual science, with narrative skills of good science popularization. I am afraid I must disagree with the earlier reviewer's ciriticism. While Steven Weinberg's Foreward is a bit patronizing, the other introductions are all helpful. While some of the papers demand attention, they are all so short that they don't demand your attention for very long. Highly recommended.