Customer Reviews

Meselson, Stahl, and the Replication of DNA: A History of 'The Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology'

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This is an excellent book for anyone interested in knowing how real science is done. Real science is not the clean, simple, easy process described in the media. It is tedious, untidy, difficult and it takes patience, determination and passion. This book conveys an intimate and close view of how real scientific biological reaearch is conducted.

This is a quite remarkable history. Holmes spent decades doing the research for this book. Even though I know both principals quite well and lived through their careers following the publication of the famous work, I did not know the full story of the work leading up to the "beautiful experiment". Holmes does a fantastic job capturing the thoughts and feelings of the principals and the supporting cast of Max Delbruck, Jim Watson, Cy Leventhal and others. Holmes thinks deeply about the philosophy of science and does a good job of explaining, with retroactive interviews, the thought processes of Meselson and Stahl as they circled around and finally hit on the right way to do the big experiment. The only small element I thought missing was a speculation about the possible reasons the Nobel committee has failed for more than 50 years to recognize the significance of the experiment.