The Legacy of William T. Astbury
Outside King's College on the Strand in London, a commemorative plaque hails 'Photo 51' taken by Rosalind Franklin in 1952 as 'one of the world's most important photographs'. It is an accolade that is well deserved, for it was from this X-ray diffraction image of B-form DNA that James Watson and Francis Crick obtained a vital clue that enabled them to solve the structure of DNA.
Yet only a year earlier, ElwynBeighton, working in the physicist William Astbury's lab at the University of Leeds had taken a set of photographs that were almost identical. Like Franklin's 'Photo 51', Beighton's pictures showed the clear black cross pattern that was characteristic of a helical molecule. Yet while Franklin's photo set Watson's pulse racing, Astbury did nothing with Beighton's pictures – they were never published in a journal nor even presented at a meeting.
How a scientist of Astbury's calibre could apparently neglect such an invaluable clue might at first sight appear to be a blunder of monumental proportions. Yet, as the following paper argues, such a judgement would be hasty, harsh and flawed. Rather than judge Astbury in the light of our present-day knowledge about DNA, we need to understand him and his work in the context of his own time. Taking this approach, what becomes clear is that Astbury had good reasons for not becoming over-excited by Beighton's pictures.
To remember Astbury only for having failed where Watson and Crick succeeded would also be to do an immense disservice to his real scientific contribution. Whilst the early X-ray studies on the structure of DNA made by Astbury's PhD student, Florence Bell, provided Watson and Crick with an invaluable foothold when they began building their own model of the molecule, his true scientific legacy went far beyond DNA. Astbury's most valuable insight was that living systems could be understood in terms of giant chain molecules, and how these macromolecules change shape. It an insight which underlies much of modern biology and has proven to be of profound importance in understanding the mechanism of pathological condition's such as Alzheimer's disease.
Yet Astbury's legacy went even further than this. For not only could did he advocate that we could understand life in terms of the shape of macromolecules, but he also raised the possibility that we could deliberately alter the structure of these molecules. Always a keen populariser of science, Astbury gave a memorable demonstration of the practical application of this concept by wearing an overcoat spun from renaturedmonkeynut protein fibres. Nearly three decades before the rise of recombinant DNA, Astbury was pioneering biotechnology at the molecular level and, while he paved the way for Watson and Crick, it is perhaps for this that he truly deserves to be remembered.
Dr. Kersten T. Hall
School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science,
University of Leeds
'The Man in the Monkeynut Coat: William Astbury and the Forgotten Road to the Double-Helix' by Dr. Hall will be published by Oxford University Press in 2014.