7/28/2019 Double Helix Meets God Particle
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Double Helix Meets God Particle
by Samantha Weinberg, June 7th 2013
In 1985 Mick Jagger duetted with Tina Turner for Live Aid. In
1995, Robert de Niro and Al Pacino shared the billing in "Heat". On
June 6th 2013 Peter Higgs andJames Watson met at the Cheltenham
Science Festival. As the first meeting between two giants of
science, it was pretty low-key. They shook hands outside the town
hall, nerve centre of the festival, and chatted briefly, before
Watson was swept off to his first event on the main stage.
Sixty years ago, the young Watson and his eccentric British lab
partner, FrancesCrick, walked into their lab in Cambridge and, as
Watson put it yesterday, "Wesuddenly knew we had cracked it". It,
of course, being the double-helix structure of DNA. The
restgenetics, forensic science, Angelina Jolie's decision to have
apreventative double mastectomyfollowed as surely as the night the
day.
But Watson, now 85, didn't stop there. At Harvard and, for the
last 45 years, the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory on Long Island,
he has continued to do excitingscience (his current ambition, he
said, "is to be on full salary when I'm 90andbecause I'm worth it")
and to be entertaining and frequently a little wicked. Some
snippets from yesterday:
Don't bother eating blueberries for anything other than their
taste, they're notgoing to protect you against cancer: "Oxidants
are the things that tell cancercells to kill each other. So
antioxidants stop oxidants doing their job".
On Rosalind Franklin, whose work on crystallography, most people
believe, was instrumental in Watson and Crick's eureka moment but
who missed out on sharing their Nobel Prize:
I should be saying: she was a sweet girl and I misunderstood
her. She wasn't a sweet girl, anymore than I am a sweet man."
Peter Higgs was sitting in the audience and when, an hour later,
he walked ontothe same stage, Watson was there to watch him. Higgs
is a year younger than Wats
on and, thanks to the particle named after him, just as famous.
Yet there the similarities end. As he explained the history of the
search for what is also knownas the God Particle, he repeatedly
down-played his role in proposing its existence. When asked how he
felt about having a particle named after him, he said: "Very
embarrassed." And when he emerged into the mid-afternoon sun, to
find fans of all ages wanting his autograph or to have their
photograph taken with him, helooked a little bewildered.
Yet later that evening, when Watson gave another talk with the
landscape artistCharles Jencks, Higgs was again in the audience,
and he was the first to congratulate his new friend afterwards.
Samantha Weinberg is assistant editor of Intelligent Life.
http://moreintelligentlife.com/blog/anonymous/higgs-and-watson
