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123-467: Watson is a U.S. molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953 with  Francis Crick . In 1998, the Modern Library placed The Double Helix at number 7 on its list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century . In 2012, The Double Helix was named as one of the 88 "Books That Shaped America" by

246-475: A 1974 edition of Nature written by Francis Crick and Linus Pauling , and an analysis of Franklin's work by her student Aaron Klug . The Norton edition concludes with the 1953 papers on DNA structure as published in Nature . In the book Rosalind Franklin and DNA , author Anne Sayre is very critical of Watson's account. She claims that Watson's book did not give a balanced description of Rosalind Franklin and

369-425: A company to exploit the opportunity. At the time, Simon was a piano salesman and Schuster was editor of an automotive trade magazine. They pooled US$ 8,000 , equivalent to $ 142,000 today, to start a company that published crossword puzzles. The new publishing house used "fad" publishing to publish books that exploited current fads and trends. Simon called this "planned publishing". Instead of signing authors with

492-487: A different perspective on the role Franklin played in Watson and Crick's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. (See: King's College London DNA Controversy .) In the book's preface, Watson explains that he is describing his impressions at the time of the events, and not at the time he wrote the book. In the epilogue Watson writes; "Since my initial impressions about [Franklin], both scientific and personal (as recorded in

615-406: A federal judge approved a settlement of the antitrust claims, in which Simon & Schuster and the other publishers paid into a fund that provided credits to customers who had overpaid for books due to the price-fixing. In 2014, Simon & Schuster signed a partnership deal with Amazon over ebooks and also launched a new speculative fiction imprint. On October 21, 2014, Simon & Schuster signed

738-526: A heart attack; six years later, Max Schuster retired and sold his half of Simon & Schuster to Leon Shimkin. Shimkin then merged Simon & Schuster with Pocket Books under the name of Simon & Schuster. In 1968, editor-in-chief Robert Gottlieb , who worked at Simon & Schuster since 1955 and edited several bestsellers including Joseph Heller 's Catch-22 , left abruptly to work at competitor Knopf , taking other influential S&S employees, Nina Bourne , and Tony Schulte. Simon & Schuster

861-456: A helical structure was not the only possible shape for DNA—so they had a dilemma. In an effort to clarify this issue, Max Ferdinand Perutz later published what had been in the progress report, and suggested that nothing was in the report that Franklin herself had not said in her talk (attended by Watson) in late 1951. Perutz explained that the report was to a Medical Research Council (MRC) committee that had been created to "establish contact between

984-548: A longer article on 12 June 1953). The university's undergraduate newspaper Varsity also ran its own short article on the discovery on Saturday 30 May 1953. Bragg's original announcement of the discovery at a Solvay conference on proteins in Belgium on 8 April 1953 went unreported by the British press. In a seven-page, handwritten letter to his son at a British boarding school on 19 March 1953 Crick explained his discovery, beginning

1107-418: A multi-book and co-publishing deal with Glenn Beck which fell over many of its imprints and included adult non-fiction, fiction, children, and YA literature as well as e-book and audiobook originals. As part of CBS, Simon & Schuster has been the primary publisher for books related to various media franchises owned by and/or aired on CBS such as CSI . The company has also held a license to publish books in

1230-431: A multi-year partnership deal with Amazon.com in negotiations concerning the price of e-books. Simon & Schuster also launched a new science fiction imprint called Simon451 that would publish titles across science fiction and fantasy with an emphasis on ebooks and online communities. The name of the imprint was inspired by Ray Bradbury 's book Fahrenheit 451 (the temperature at which books burn). Bradbury's classic

1353-482: A new literary fiction imprint under Gallery Books Group. They also launched North Star Way, a platform-based program to provide authors with services beyond publishing including brand management, online courses, sponsorship, and business partnerships. Also as of 2016, Simon & Schuster had more than 18k e-books available for sale and signed a deal to distribute Start Publishing LLC, a catalog of 7,000 e-book titles. In 2019, CBS and Viacom reunited to form ViacomCBS. As

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1476-467: A planned manuscript, they came up with their own ideas, and then hired writers to carry them out. In the 1930s, the publisher moved to what has been referred to as "Publisher's Row" on Park Avenue in Manhattan , New York. In 1939, Simon & Schuster backed Robert Fair de Graff to found Pocket Books , America's first paperback publisher. In 1942, Simon & Schuster and Western Publishing launched

1599-594: A pupil at Mill Hill. Crick studied at University College London (UCL), a constituent college of the University of London and earned a Bachelor of Science degree awarded by the University of London in 1937. Crick began a PhD at UCL, but was interrupted by World War II . He later became a PhD student and Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge , and mainly worked at the Cavendish Laboratory and

1722-452: A result, Simon & Schuster became part of the newly formed ViacomCBS. Since February 15, 2022, ViacomCBS is known as Paramount Global . In March 2020, ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish announced the company's intention to sell the Simon & Schuster division, as it "does not have significant connection for our broader business." Bakish expected the sale to close in 2020, a date that was delayed by

1845-457: A second attempt to do so. They asked for, and received, permission to do so from both William Lawrence Bragg and Wilkins. To construct their model of DNA, Watson and Crick made use of information from unpublished X-ray diffraction images of Franklin's (shown at meetings and freely shared by Wilkins), including preliminary accounts of Franklin's results/photographs of the X-ray images that were included in

1968-463: A small audience in Moscow at a 1961 conference. Crick's reaction was to invite Nirenberg to deliver his talk to a larger audience. Watson and Crick's use of DNA X-ray diffraction data collected by Franklin and Wilkins has generated an enduring controversy. It arose from the fact that some of Franklin's unpublished data were used without her knowledge or consent by Watson and Crick in their construction of

2091-645: A small house on the south side of Abington Avenue; he had a shed at the bottom of his little garden where he taught Crick to blow glass, do chemical experiments and to make photographic prints. When he was eight or nine he transferred to the most junior form of the Northampton Grammar School , on the Billing Road. This was about 1.25 mi (2 km) from his home so he could walk there and back, by Park Avenue South and Abington Park Crescent, but he more often went by bus or, later, by bicycle. The teaching in

2214-464: A software publisher in partnership with Davidson & Associates named Simon & Schuster Interactive. The studio published video games such as Outlaw Golf , Deer Avenger , I.M. Meen , Chill Manor , EVE Online , and games based on Richard Scarry 's characters. S&S Interactive shut down in 2003. In 1998, Viacom sold Simon & Schuster's educational operations (including Prentice Hall, Macmillan, and Jossey-Bass) to Pearson plc ,

2337-485: A survey of local foraminifera (single-celled protists with shells), corresponded with Charles Darwin , and had two gastropods (snails or slugs) named after him. At an early age, Francis was attracted to science and what he could learn about it from books. As a child, he was taken to church by his parents. But by about age 12, he said he did not want to go any more as he preferred a scientific search for answers over religious belief. Walter Crick, his uncle, lived in

2460-545: A synthetic DNA. In addition to synthetic DNA there are also attempts to construct synthetic codons , synthetic endonucleases , synthetic proteins and synthetic zinc fingers . Using synthetic DNA, instead of there being 4 codons, if there are n new bases there could be as many as n codons. Research is currently being done to see if codons can be expanded to more than 3 bases. These new codons can code for new amino acids. These synthetic molecules can be used not only in medicine, but in creation of new materials. The discovery

2583-417: A while they were forbidden to make further efforts to find a molecular model of DNA. Of great importance to the model building effort of Watson and Crick was Rosalind Franklin's understanding of basic chemistry, which indicated that the hydrophilic phosphate -containing backbones of the nucleotide chains of DNA should be positioned so as to interact with water molecules on the outside of the molecule while

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2706-531: A written progress report for the King's College laboratory of Sir John Randall from late 1952. It is a matter of debate whether Watson and Crick should have had access to Franklin's results without her knowledge or permission, and before she had a chance to formally publish the results of her detailed analysis of her X-ray diffraction data which were included in the progress report. However, Watson and Crick found fault in her steadfast assertion that, according to her data,

2829-417: Is also published by Simon & Schuster. Simon & Schuster expanded beyond book publishing in 2015 by offering a new business model and additional services for authors. In 2015, Simon & Schuster announced the creation of a new publishing unit and imprint called North Star Way. The imprint would publish non-fiction titles such as self-improvement, inspirational and mind-body-spirit titles. In addition,

2952-595: Is based. This edition includes several appendices, including letters by Crick and Watson giving the first account of the discovery, a previously unpublished chapter, an account of the controversy surrounding the publication, and the unsympathetic review by the late Erwin Chargaff from the March 29, 1968, issue of Science , which he previously declined permission to reprint in the 1980 Norton Critical Edition of The Double Helix edited by Gunther Stent . The book does not include

3075-540: Is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. As of 2017 , Simon & Schuster was the third largest publisher in the United States, publishing 2,000 titles annually under 35 different imprints . In 1924, Richard Simon 's aunt, a crossword puzzle enthusiast, asked whether there was a book of New York World crossword puzzles, which were popular at the time. After discovering that none had been published, Simon and Max Schuster decided to launch

3198-525: Is relevant both to peptide bonds in proteins and the structure of nucleotides in DNA. In 1951 and 1952, together with William Cochran and Vladimir Vand, Crick assisted in the development of a mathematical theory of X-ray diffraction by a helical molecule. This theoretical result matched well with X-ray data for proteins that contain sequences of amino acids in the alpha helix conformation. Helical diffraction theory turned out to also be useful for understanding

3321-400: Is what made Crick confident that DNA was a double helix with antiparallel chains, but there were other chains of reasoning and sources of information that also led to these conclusions. As a result of leaving King's College for Birkbeck College , Franklin was asked by John Randall to give up her work on DNA. When it became clear to Wilkins and the supervisors of Watson and Crick that Franklin

3444-758: The Star Trek franchise under Pocket Books . In 2011, Simon & Schuster signed a number of co-publishing deals. Glenn Beck signed a new co-publishing deal with Simon & Schuster for his own imprint, Mercury Ink . Under Atria, Simon & Schuster also launched a publishing venture with Cash Money Records called Cash Money Content. On April 11, 2012, the United States Department of Justice filed United States v. Apple Inc. , naming Apple , Simon & Schuster, and four other major publishers as defendants. The suit alleged that they conspired to fix prices for e-books , and weaken Amazon.com 's position in

3567-542: The COVID-19 pandemic . In September 2020, German media group Bertelsmann , which owns Penguin Random House , announced that it was interested in acquiring Simon & Schuster. According to Bertelsmann chief executive and chairman Thomas Rabe , "We've been the most active player on the consolidation of the book publishing market in the last 10 years. We combined Penguin and Random House very successfully to create by far

3690-573: The Little Golden Books series in cooperation with the Artists and Writers Guild. In 1944, Marshall Field III , owner of the Chicago Sun , purchased Simon & Schuster and Pocket Books. The company was sold back to Simon and Schuster following his death in 1957 for $ 1 million. In the 1950s and 1960s, many publishers including Simon & Schuster turned toward educational publishing due to

3813-567: The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. He was also an Honorary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge , and of University College, London. Crick began a PhD research project on measuring the viscosity of water at high temperatures (which he later described as "the dullest problem imaginable" ) in the laboratory of physicist Edward Neville da Costa Andrade at University College London, but with

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3936-553: The New York University Tandon School of Engineering . During World War II, he worked for the Admiralty Research Laboratory , from which many notable scientists emerged, including David Bates , Robert Boyd , Thomas Gaskell , George Deacon , John Gunn , Harrie Massey , and Nevill Mott ; he worked on the design of magnetic and acoustic mines and was instrumental in designing a new mine that

4059-505: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 with Wilkins. When Watson came to Cambridge, Crick was a 35-year-old graduate student (due to his work during WWII) and Watson was only 23, but had already obtained a PhD. They shared an interest in the fundamental problem of learning how genetic information might be stored in molecular form. Watson and Crick talked endlessly about DNA and

4182-549: The United States Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to block Penguin Random House's proposed acquisition of Simon & Schuster. The lawsuit argues that the acquisition would create a publisher with too much influence over books and author payments. A federal judge sided with the plaintiff, leading Paramount to nullify the deal in November 2022. In 2022, Simon & Schuster employee Filippo Bernardini

4305-766: The United States government and he did not visit the UK until later, at which point he met none of the DNA researchers in England. At any rate he was preoccupied with proteins at the time, not DNA. Watson and Crick were not officially working on DNA. Crick was writing his PhD thesis; Watson also had other work such as trying to obtain crystals of myoglobin for X-ray diffraction experiments. In 1952, Watson performed X-ray diffraction on tobacco mosaic virus and found results indicating that it had helical structure. Having failed once, Watson and Crick were now somewhat reluctant to try again and for

4428-686: The baby boom market. Pocket Books focused on paperbacks for the educational market instead of textbooks and started the Washington Square Press imprint in 1959. By 1964 it had published over 200 titles and was expected to put out another 400 by the end of that year. Books published under the imprint included classic reprints such as Lorna Doone , Ivanhoe , Tom Sawyer , Huckleberry Finn , and Robinson Crusoe . In 1967, Simon & Schuster acquired Monarch Press Publishing, Inc., along with its extensive line of college and high school study guides published. In 1960, Richard Simon died of

4551-414: The hydrophobic bases should be packed into the core. Franklin shared this chemical knowledge with Watson and Crick when she pointed out to them that their first model (from 1951, with the phosphates inside) was obviously wrong. Crick described what he saw as the failure of Wilkins and Franklin to cooperate and work towards finding a molecular model of DNA as a major reason why he and Watson eventually made

4674-478: The molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Crick was an important theoretical molecular biologist and played a crucial role in research related to revealing the helical structure of DNA. He is widely known for the use of the term " central dogma " to summarise the idea that once information is transferred from nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to proteins, it cannot flow back to nucleic acids. In other words,

4797-525: The "elaborate chemical mechanisms that natural selection had evolved over billions of years." He described this transition as, "almost as if one had to be born again". According to Crick, the experience of learning physics had taught him something important—hubris—and the conviction that since physics was already a success, great advances should also be possible in other sciences such as biology. Crick felt that this attitude encouraged him to be more daring than typical biologists who tended to concern themselves with

4920-403: The "nucleus of S&S's educational and informational business." Three California educational companies were also purchased between 1988 and 1990 – Quercus, Fearon Education and Janus Book Publishers. In all, Simon & Schuster spent more than $ 1 billion in acquisitions between 1983 and 1991. In the 1980s, Snyder also made an unsuccessful bid toward video publishing which

5043-433: The 1940s, some evidence had been found pointing to another macromolecule, DNA, the other major component of chromosomes , as a candidate genetic molecule. In the 1944 Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment , Oswald Avery and his collaborators showed that a heritable phenotypic difference could be caused in bacteria by providing them with a particular DNA molecule. However, other evidence was interpreted as suggesting that DNA

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5166-1052: The Bureau of Business Practice was sold to Wolters Kluwer . Subsequently, Macmillan Library Reference's children's imprints (Silver Burdett Press, Dillon Press, Crestwood House, Silver Press, New Discovery and Julian Messner ) were closed. Then, Gale acquired Macmillan Library Reference (Charles Scribner's Sons Reference, Macmillan Reference, Thorndike Press, G.K. Hall , Twayne Publishers and Schirmer Books). Finally, IDG Books acquired Macmillan General Reference (including Frommer's , J.K. Lasser , Betty Crocker Cookbooks, Weight Watchers Dieting and Cookbooks and Howell House Pet Books but excluding Complete Idiot's Guides , which Pearson later transferred to Macmillan Computer Publishing under Alpha Books and currently part of Penguin Random House under Dorling Kindersley ). In 2002, Simon & Schuster acquired its Canadian distributor Distican. Simon & Schuster began publishing in Canada in 2013. At

5289-661: The DNA double helix structure was made possible by their willingness to combine theory, modelling and experimental results (albeit mostly done by others) to achieve their goal. The DNA double helix structure proposed by Watson and Crick was based upon "Watson-Crick" bonds between the four bases most frequently found in DNA (A, C, T, G) and RNA (A, C, U, G). However, later research showed that triple-stranded, quadruple-stranded and other more complex DNA molecular structures required Hoogsteen base pairing . The entire field of synthetic biology began with work by researchers such as Erik T Kool, in which bases other than A, C, T and G are used in

5412-470: The Library of Congress. Though an important book about an immensely important subject, it was and remains a controversial account. Though it was originally slated to be published by Harvard University Press , Watson's home university, Harvard dropped the arrangement after protestations from Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins , co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, and it was published instead by Atheneum in

5535-552: The Netherlands and Belgium, as well as its sister companies, the audiobook producer Thinium , and Bookchoice , a subscription-based platform for e-books and audiobooks. This is the first expansion of Simon & Schuster into a non-English market. In September 2024, it was announced that Simon & Schuster Australia had entered an agreement to acquire publisher Affirm Press . Simon & Schuster has published thousands of books from thousands of authors. This list represents some of

5658-459: The S&;S Video division never took off. Simon & Schuster launched its audiobook division in 1985. According to Korda, audiobooks were a major business for Simon & Schuster by the 1990s. In 1989, Gulf and Western Inc., owner of Simon & Schuster, changed its name to Paramount Communications Inc. In 1990, The New York Times described Simon & Schuster as the largest book publisher in

5781-512: The United States and Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK. The intimate first-person memoir about scientific discovery was unusual for its time. The book has been hailed for its highly personal view of scientific work, though has been criticised as caring only about the glory of priority and the author is claimed to be willing to appropriate data from others surreptitiously in order to obtain it. It has also been criticized as being disagreeably sexist towards Rosalind Franklin , another participant in

5904-411: The United States with sales of $ 1.3 billion the previous year. That same year, Simon & Schuster acquired the children's publisher Green Tiger Press. In 1993, Simon & Schuster bought Macmillan (including Scribner's , Free Press , and Jossey-Bass), and changed its name to Paramount Publishing. Viacom then bought Paramount in 1994 and changed the name back to Simon & Schuster. Macmillan

6027-439: The Watson and Crick model was not the first "bases in" model to be proposed. Furberg's results had also provided the correct orientation of the DNA sugars with respect to the bases. During their model building, Crick and Watson learned that an antiparallel orientation of the two nucleotide chain backbones worked best to orient the base pairs in the centre of a double helix. Crick's access to Franklin's progress report of late 1952

6150-578: The book, edited by Alex Gann and Jan Witkowski, was published in November 2012 by Simon & Schuster in association with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press . The new edition coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the award of the 1962 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine to Francis Crick , James D. Watson and Maurice Wilkins . It contains over three hundred annotations on the events and characters portrayed, with facsimile letters and contemporary photographs, many previously unpublished. Their sources include newly discovered correspondence from Crick,

6273-404: The conclusion that X-ray diffraction data for DNA indicated that the molecule had a helical structure—but Franklin vehemently disputed this conclusion. Stimulated by their discussions with Wilkins and what Watson learned by attending a talk given by Franklin about her work on DNA, Crick and Watson produced and showed off an erroneous first model of DNA. Their hurry to produce a model of DNA structure

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6396-428: The data from King's College, was to guess how the nucleotide bases pack into the core of the DNA double helix. Another key to finding the correct structure of DNA was the so-called Chargaff ratios , experimentally determined ratios of the nucleotide subunits of DNA: the amount of guanine is equal to cytosine and the amount of adenine is equal to thymine . A visit by Erwin Chargaff to England, in 1952, reinforced

6519-409: The daunting problems of biology and not the past successes of physics . For the better part of two years, Crick worked on the physical properties of cytoplasm at Cambridge's Strangeways Research Laboratory , headed by Honor Bridget Fell , with a Medical Research Council studentship, until he joined Max Perutz and John Kendrew at the Cavendish Laboratory . The Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge

6642-626: The different groups of people working for the Council". Randall's and Perutz's laboratories were both funded by the MRC. It is also not clear how important Franklin's unpublished results from the progress report actually were for the model-building done by Watson and Crick. After the first crude X-ray diffraction images of DNA were collected in the 1930s, William Astbury had talked about stacks of nucleotides spaced at 3.4 angström (0.34 nanometre) intervals in DNA. A citation to Astbury's earlier X-ray diffraction work

6765-818: The discovery of the double helix model of DNA, Crick's interests quickly turned to the biological implications of the structure. In 1953, Watson and Crick published another article in Nature which stated: "it therefore seems likely that the precise sequence of the bases is the code that carries the genetical information". In 1956, Crick and Watson speculated on the structure of small viruses. They suggested that spherical viruses such as Tomato bushy stunt virus had icosahedral symmetry and were made from 60 identical subunits. After his short time in New York, Crick returned to Cambridge where he worked until 1976, at which time he moved to California. Crick engaged in several X-ray diffraction collaborations such as one with Alexander Rich on

6888-496: The discovery, who was deceased by the time Watson's book was written. The events described in the book were dramatized in a BBC television program Life Story (known as The Race for the Double Helix in the U.S.). The book leaned heavily on personalities, and some, like Rosalind Franklin , were treated cartoonishly. Burton Feldman A 1980 Norton Critical Edition of The Double Helix edited by Gunther Stent , analyzed

7011-616: The double helix model of DNA. Of the four DNA researchers, only Franklin had a degree in chemistry; Wilkins and Crick had backgrounds in physics, Watson in biology. Simon %26 Schuster Simon & Schuster LLC ( / ˈ ʃ uː s t ər / , SHOO -stər ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster . Along with Penguin Random House , Hachette , HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers , Simon & Schuster

7134-401: The early pages of this book) were often wrong I want to say something here about her achievements." He goes on to describe her superb work, and, despite this, the enormous barriers she faced as a woman in the field of science. He also acknowledged that it took years to overcome their bickering before he could appreciate Franklin's generosity and integrity. An annotated and illustrated version of

7257-529: The end of 2005, Viacom split into two companies: CBS Corporation (which inherited S&S and Paramount Parks ), and the other retaining the Viacom name. Also in 2005, Simon & Schuster acquired Strebor Books International, which was founded in 1999 by author Kristina Laferne Roberts, who has written under the pseudonym "Zane". A year later, in 2006, Simon & Schuster launched the conservative imprint Threshold Editions . In 2009, Simon & Schuster signed

7380-544: The events surrounding its initial publication. It presents a selection of both positive and negative reviews of the book, by such figures as Philip Morrison , Richard Lewontin , Alex Comfort , Jacob Bronowski , and more in-depth analyses by Peter Medawar , Robert K. Merton , and Andre Lwoff . Erwin Chargaff declined permission to reprint his unsympathetic review from the March 29, 1968, issue of Science , but letters in response from Max Perutz , Maurice Wilkins, and Watson are printed. Also included are retrospectives from

7503-549: The final step in the flow of information from nucleic acids to proteins is irreversible. During the remainder of his career, he held the post of J.W. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California . His later research centred on theoretical neurobiology and attempts to advance the scientific study of human consciousness. He remained in this post until his death; "he

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7626-653: The first people in April 1953 to see the model of the structure of DNA , constructed by Crick and Watson; at the time they were working at Oxford University 's Chemistry Department. All were impressed by the new DNA model, especially Brenner who subsequently worked with Crick at Cambridge in the Cavendish Laboratory and the new Laboratory of Molecular Biology . According to the late Dr. Beryl Oughton, later Rimmer, they all travelled together in two cars once Dorothy Hodgkin announced to them that they were off to Cambridge to see

7749-563: The four press cuttings from the News Chronicle , Varsity and The New York Times (2) of May and June 1953 regarding the discovery of the structure of DNA, and Crick's letter of 13th April 1967 is incomplete. In 1987, the memoir was adapted as a 107-minute television docudrama called Life Story for the BBC, airing on Horizon , the long-running British documentary television series on BBC Two that covers science and philosophy. The script

7872-464: The global publisher and then owner of Penguin and the Financial Times ; Pearson then merged the operations with Addison-Wesley Longman to form Pearson Education . Later, Pearson sold several of the acquired S&S divisions: first Appleton & Lange was divested to McGraw-Hill and Master Data Central was sold to Master Data Center . Then, Jossey-Bass was sold to John Wiley & Sons and

7995-538: The group would also serve as a platform and set of services for authors that go beyond what a traditional book publisher offers to find their audience. The services include helping authors expand their reach through online courses, seminars, workshops, mobile applications, video and audiobooks, sponsorships and business partnerships, and podcasts. North Star Way sits within the Gallery Publishing Group division. According to Michele Martin, publisher and founder,

8118-414: The heavyweight champ." Soon after Crick's death, there have been allegations about him having used LSD when he came to the idea of the helix structure of the DNA. While he almost certainly did use LSD, it is unlikely that he did so as early as 1953. In 1954, at the age of 37, Crick completed his PhD thesis: " X-Ray Diffraction: Polypeptides and Proteins " and received his degree. Crick then worked in

8241-541: The higher forms was satisfactory, but not as stimulating. After the age of 14, he was educated at Mill Hill School in London (on a scholarship), where he studied mathematics, physics , and chemistry with his best friend John Shilston. He shared the Walter Knox Prize for Chemistry on Mill Hill School's Foundation Day, Friday, 7 July 1933. He declared that his success was founded on the quality of teaching he received whilst

8364-430: The idea that it might be possible to guess a good molecular model of its structure. A key piece of experimentally-derived information came from X-ray diffraction images that had been obtained by Wilkins, Franklin, and Gosling. In November 1951, Wilkins came to Cambridge and shared his data with Watson and Crick. Alexander Stokes (another expert in helical diffraction theory) and Wilkins (both at King's College) had reached

8487-506: The ideas in the books into a variety of platforms." The name prompted Marvel Comics to attempt to register the name of their superhero Northstar in February 2015. The application was denied as Simon & Schuster had already made a trademark application for North Star Way in January. Simon & Schuster launched SimonSays.com a portal for online video courses in 2016, along with Scout Press,

8610-464: The key features of the protein synthesis process: The adaptor molecules were eventually shown to be tRNAs and the catalytic "ribonucleic-protein complexes" became known as ribosomes . An important step was the realisation by Crick and Brenner on 15 April 1960 during a conversation with François Jacob that messenger RNA was not the same thing as ribosomal RNA . Later that summer, Brenner, Jacob, and Matthew Meselson conducted an experiment which

8733-722: The laboratory of David Harker at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute , where he continued to develop his skills in the analysis of X-ray diffraction data for proteins, working primarily on ribonuclease and the mechanisms of protein synthesis . David Harker, the American X-ray crystallographer, was described as "the John Wayne of crystallography" by Vittorio Luzzati, a crystallographer at the Centre for Molecular Genetics in Gif-sur-Yvette near Paris, who had worked with Rosalind Franklin. After

8856-579: The largest book publisher in the world, actually the only global book publisher. Given this position we would, of course, be interested in Simon & Schuster." Vivendi , which owns the French publisher Editis , and News Corp , which owns HarperCollins , were also named as contenders in acquiring Simon & Schuster. ViacomCBS expected the bids to be placed before November 26, 2020. On November 25, 2020, ViacomCBS announced it would sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House for $ 2.175 billion. The deal

8979-407: The letter "My Dear Michael, Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery". The letter was put up for auction at Christie's New York on 10 April 2013 with an estimate of $ 1 to $ 2 million, eventually selling for $ 6,059,750, the largest amount ever paid for a letter at auction. Sydney Brenner , Jack Dunitz , Dorothy Hodgkin , Leslie Orgel , and Beryl M Oughton, were some of

9102-612: The market, in violation of antitrust law . Simon & Schuster reorganized all of their imprints under four main groups in 2012. The four groups included the Atria Publishing Group, the Scribner Publishing Group, the Simon & Schuster Publishing Group and the Gallery Publishing Group. According to CEO Carolyn Reidy , the divisions were created to align imprints that complement one another and that

9225-475: The model of the structure of DNA. Orgel also later worked with Crick at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies . Crick was often described as very talkative, with Watson – in The Double Helix – implying lack of modesty. His personality combined with his scientific accomplishments produced many opportunities for Crick to stimulate reactions from others, both inside and outside the scientific world, which

9348-497: The molecular structure of large molecules like proteins and DNA, but there were serious technical problems then preventing X-ray crystallography from being applicable to such large molecules. Crick taught himself the mathematical theory of X-ray crystallography. During the period of Crick's study of X-ray diffraction , researchers in the Cambridge lab were attempting to determine the most stable helical conformation of amino acid chains in proteins (the alpha helix ). Linus Pauling

9471-730: The morning of 28 July 2004 at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Thornton Hospital in La Jolla; he was cremated and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean. A public memorial was held on 27 September 2004 at the Salk Institute , La Jolla, near San Diego, California; guest speakers included James Watson , Sydney Brenner , Alex Rich , Seymour Benzer , Aaron Klug , Christof Koch , Pat Churchland , Vilayanur Ramachandran , Tomaso Poggio , Leslie Orgel , Terry Sejnowski , his son Michael Crick, and his younger daughter Jacqueline Nichols. A private memorial for family and colleagues

9594-474: The name North Star reflects their mission, "to publish books that will help readers find the path to a better life, and to be a guide for our authors, not only through publication of their books but also in the many other activities that can help their message find the widest possible audience." In an interview with Kirkus Reviews , Michele Martin expanded that North Star Way, "aims to meet consumers where they are, in whatever form of media they consume. We expand

9717-430: The nature of her interactions with Maurice Wilkins at King's College, London. Sayre's book raises doubts about the ethics of how Watson and Crick used some of Franklin's results and whether adequate credit was given to her. Watson had very limited contact with Franklin during the time she worked on DNA. By providing more information about Franklin's life than was included in Watson's book, it was possible for Sayre to provide

9840-477: The next day; Victor K. McElheny , in researching his biography, "Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution", found a clipping of a six-paragraph New York Times article written from London and dated 16 May 1953 with the headline "Form of 'Life Unit' in Cell Is Scanned". The article ran in an early edition and was then pulled to make space for news deemed more important. ( The New York Times subsequently ran

9963-516: The organising principle of what became known as molecular biology. Crick had by this time become a highly influential theoretical molecular biologist. Proof that the genetic code is a degenerate triplet code finally came from genetics experiments, some of which were performed by Crick. The details of the code came mostly from work by Marshall Nirenberg and others who synthesized synthetic RNA molecules and used them as templates for in vitro protein synthesis. Nirenberg first announced his results to

10086-628: The outbreak of World War II (in particular, an incident during the Battle of Britain when a bomb fell through the roof of the laboratory and destroyed his experimental apparatus), Crick was deflected from a possible career in physics. During his second year as a PhD student, however, he was awarded the Carey Foster Research Prize, a great honour. He did postdoctoral work at the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute , now part of

10209-541: The papers of Franklin, Pauling, and Wilkins, and they include a chapter dropped from the original edition that described Watson's holiday in the Italian Alps in 1952. The edition was favorably reviewed in The New York Times by Nicholas Wade who commented, "anyone seeking to understand modern biology and genomics could do much worse than start with the discovery of the structure of DNA, on which almost everything else

10332-400: The predominant tautomers of the pyrimidine (C and T) bases would be the amine and keto configurations of cytosine and thymine, rather than the imino and enol forms that Crick and Watson had assumed. They consulted Jerry Donohue who confirmed the most likely structures of the nucleotide bases. The base pairs are held together by hydrogen bonds , the same non-covalent interaction that stabilise

10455-459: The protein α-helix. The correct structures were essential for the positioning of the hydrogen bonds. These insights led Watson to deduce the true biological relationships of the A:T and C:G pairs. After the discovery of the hydrogen bonded A:T and C:G pairs, Watson and Crick soon had their anti-parallel, double helical model of DNA, with the hydrogen bonds at the core of the helix providing a way to "unzip"

10578-401: The salience of this important fact for Watson and Crick. The significance of these ratios for the structure of DNA were not recognised until Watson, persisting in building structural models, realised that A:T and C:G pairs are structurally similar. In particular, the length of each base pair is the same. Chargaff had also pointed out to Watson that, in the aqueous, saline environment of the cell,

10701-402: The structural stability needed to hold genetic information in cells. It only remained as an exercise of experimental biology to discover exactly which molecule was the genetic molecule. In Crick's view, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection , Gregor Mendel 's genetics and knowledge of the molecular basis of genetics, when combined, revealed the secret of life. Crick had

10824-480: The structure of collagen . However, Crick was quickly drifting away from continued work related to his expertise in the interpretation of X-ray diffraction patterns of proteins. George Gamow established a group of scientists interested in the role of RNA as an intermediary between DNA as the genetic storage molecule in the nucleus of cells and the synthesis of proteins in the cytoplasm (the RNA Tie Club ). It

10947-511: The structure of DNA. Late in 1951, Crick started working with James Watson at Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge , England. Using " Photo 51 " (the X-ray diffraction results of Rosalind Franklin and her graduate student Raymond Gosling of King's College London, given to them by Gosling and Franklin's colleague Wilkins), Watson and Crick together developed a model for a helical structure of DNA, which they published in 1953. For this and subsequent work they were jointly awarded

11070-422: The structure would "lead to a sharper editorial focus for our imprints even as it takes consideration of the natural affinities among them." In 2012, Simon & Schuster launched a self-publishing arm of the company, Archway Publishing. On November 14, 2013, Simon & Schuster signed a co-publishing agreement with former New York Yankees shortstop, Derek Jeter , to launch Jeter Publishing. In December 2013,

11193-485: The transition from the non-living to the living, and how the brain makes a conscious mind. He realised that his background made him more qualified for research on the first topic and the field of biophysics . It was at this time of Crick's transition from physics to biology that he was influenced by both Linus Pauling and Erwin Schrödinger . It was clear in theory that covalent bonds in biological molecules could provide

11316-411: The triplets were used, "magically" producing just the 20 needed combinations. Experimental results were needed; theory alone could not decide the nature of the code. Crick also used the term " central dogma " to summarise an idea that implies that genetic information flow between macromolecules would be essentially one-way: Some critics thought that by using the word "dogma", Crick was implying that this

11439-423: The two complementary strands for easy replication : the last key requirement for a likely model of the genetic molecule. As important as Crick's contributions to the discovery of the double helical DNA model were, he stated that without the chance to collaborate with Watson, he would not have found the structure by himself. Crick did tentatively attempt to perform some experiments on nucleotide base pairing, but he

11562-450: The very optimistic view that life would very soon be created in a test tube. However, some people (such as fellow researcher and colleague Esther Lederberg ) thought that Crick was unduly optimistic. It was clear that some macromolecule such as a protein was likely to be the genetic molecule. However, it was well known that proteins are structural and functional macromolecules, some of which carry out enzymatic reactions of cells. In

11685-414: The wetter B form). Wilkins shared this information about the B form of DNA with Crick and Watson. Crick did not see Franklin's B form X-ray images ( Photo 51 ) until after the DNA double helix model was published. One of the few references cited by Watson and Crick when they published their model of DNA was to a published article that included Sven Furberg's DNA model that had the bases on the inside. Thus,

11808-498: Was a corresponding set of small "adaptor molecules" that would hydrogen bond to short sequences of a nucleic acid, and also link to one of the amino acids. He also explored the many theoretical possibilities by which short nucleic acid sequences might code for the 20 amino acids. During the mid-to-late 1950s Crick was very much intellectually engaged in sorting out the mystery of how proteins are synthesised. By 1958, Crick's thinking had matured and he could list in an orderly way all of

11931-404: Was a rule that could not be questioned, but all he really meant was that it was a compelling idea without much solid evidence to support it. In his thinking about the biological processes linking DNA genes to proteins, Crick made explicit the distinction between the materials involved, the energy required, and the information flow. Crick was focused on this third component (information) and it became

12054-473: Was acquired by Gulf+Western in an 8-for-1 stock swap on January 28, 1975. Four years later in 1979, Richard Snyder was named CEO of the company. Over the next several years he would help the company to grow substantially. After the death of Gulf+Western head Charles Bluhdorn on February 19, 1983, the company made the decision to diversify. Bluhdorn's successor Martin Davis told The New York Times , "Society

12177-478: Was acquired for US$ 552.8 million. Later that year, Snyder was suddenly fired from S&S and was replaced by the company's president and chief operating officer Jonathan Newcomb. Simon & Schuster then sold several peripheral assets, such as selling Charles E. Simon Co. to CDB Infotek. Gousha was sold to Rand McNally in 1996. In 1994, S&S acquired the software operations of Markt+Technik . Later that year, Simon & Schuster (through Paramount) launched

12300-572: Was an English molecular biologist , biophysicist , and neuroscientist . He, James Watson , Rosalind Franklin , and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule . Crick and Watson's paper in Nature in 1953 laid the groundwork for understanding DNA structure and functions. Together with Maurice Wilkins, they were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning

12423-411: Was arrested for the 2016–2021 literary phishing thefts . The company released a statement saying they were "shocked and horrified to learn today of the allegations of fraud and identity theft by an employee." In June 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported that HarperCollins and investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) had emerged as potential frontrunners for the company. On August 3, 2023, it

12546-504: Was believed to have led to the company's success in the audiobook business. Snyder was dismayed to realize that Simon & Schuster did not own the video rights to Jane Fonda's Workout Book , a huge bestseller at the time and that the video company producing the VHS was making more money on the video. This prompted Snyder to ask editors to obtain video rights for every new book. Agents were often reluctant to give these up – which meant

12669-416: Was brought into the company fold in 1985 for over $ 700 million and was viewed by some executives to be a catalyst for change for the company as a whole. This acquisition was followed by Silver Burdett in 1986, mapmaker Gousha in 1987 and Charles E. Simon in 1988. Part of the acquisition included educational publisher Allyn & Bacon which, according to then editor and chief Michael Korda , became

12792-510: Was clear to Crick that there had to be a code by which a short sequence of nucleotides would specify a particular amino acid in a newly synthesised protein. In 1956, Crick wrote an informal paper about the genetic coding problem for the small group of scientists in Gamow's RNA group. In this article, Crick reviewed the evidence supporting the idea that there was a common set of about 20 amino acids used to synthesise proteins. Crick proposed that there

12915-521: Was driven in part by the knowledge that they were competing against Linus Pauling. Given Pauling's recent success in discovering the Alpha helix, they feared that Pauling might also be the first to determine the structure of DNA. Many have speculated about what might have happened had Pauling been able to travel to Britain as planned in May 1952. As it was, his political activities caused his travel to be restricted by

13038-563: Was editing a manuscript on his death bed, a scientist until the bitter end" according to Christof Koch . Crick was the first son of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth Crick (née Wilkins). He was born on 8 June 1916 and raised in Weston Favell , then a small village near the English town of Northampton , in which Crick's father and uncle ran the family's boot and shoe factory. His grandfather, Walter Drawbridge Crick , an amateur naturalist , wrote

13161-418: Was effective against German minesweepers . In 1947, aged 31, Crick began studying biology and became part of an important migration of physical scientists into biology research. This migration was made possible by the newly won influence of physicists such as Sir John Randall , who had helped win the war with inventions such as radar . Crick had to adjust from the "elegance and deep simplicity" of physics to

13284-479: Was expected to close in 2022, but was blocked by US federal judge Florence Y. Pan on October 31, 2022. An appeal to the court ruling was announced a day later by Bertelsmann, but it was ultimately canceled on November 21. In 2021, Simon & Schuster made book deals with former Trump administration officials, such as Vice President Mike Pence and Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway . This prompted protests among Simon & Schuster staff. On November 2, 2021,

13407-480: Was going to the new job, and that Linus Pauling was working on the structure of DNA, they were willing to share Franklin's data with Watson and Crick, in the hope that they could find a good model of DNA before Pauling was able. Franklin's X-ray diffraction data for DNA and her systematic analysis of DNA's structural features were useful to Watson and Crick in guiding them towards a correct molecular model. The key problem for Watson and Crick, which could not be resolved by

13530-606: Was held on 3 August 2004. Crick's Nobel Prize medal and diploma from the Nobel committee was sold at auction in June 2013 for $ 2,270,000. It was bought by Jack Wang, the CEO of Chinese medical company Biomobie. 20% of the sale price of the medal was donated to the Francis Crick Institute in London. Crick was interested in two fundamental unsolved problems of biology: how molecules make

13653-482: Was made on 28 February 1953; the first Watson/Crick paper appeared in Nature on 25 April 1953. Sir Lawrence Bragg, the director of the Cavendish Laboratory , where Watson and Crick worked, gave a talk at Guy's Hospital Medical School in London on Thursday 14 May 1953 which resulted in an article by Ritchie Calder in the News Chronicle of London, on Friday 15 May 1953, entitled "Why You Are You. Nearer Secret of Life." The news reached readers of The New York Times

13776-433: Was more of a theoretical biologist than an experimental biologist. There was another near-discovery of the base pairing rules in early 1952. Crick had started to think about interactions between the bases. He asked John Griffith to try to calculate attractive interactions between the DNA bases from chemical principles and quantum mechanics . Griffith's best guess was that A:T and G:C were attractive pairs. At that time, Crick

13899-428: Was not aware of Chargaff's rules and he made little of Griffith's calculations, although it did start him thinking about complementary replication. Identification of the correct base-pairing rules (A-T, G-C) was achieved by Watson "playing" with cardboard cut-out models of the nucleotide bases, much in the manner that Linus Pauling had discovered the protein alpha helix a few years earlier. The Watson and Crick discovery of

14022-487: Was one of only eight references in Franklin's first paper on DNA. Analysis of Astbury's published DNA results and the better X-ray diffraction images collected by Wilkins and Franklin revealed the helical nature of DNA. It was possible to predict the number of bases stacked within a single turn of the DNA helix (10 per turn; a full turn of the helix is 27 angströms [2.7 nm] in the compact A form, 34 angströms [3.4 nm] in

14145-409: Was reported that KKR was in "advanced talks" with Paramount Global. On August 7, 2023, Paramount Global announced that it had agreed to sell Simon & Schuster to KKR for $ 1.62 billion. The sale was completed on October 30, 2023. In May 2024, Simon & Schuster acquired Veen Bosch & Keuning (VBK), the largest Dutch book publishing company. The acquisition includes all of VBK's imprints in

14268-508: Was structurally uninteresting and possibly just a molecular scaffold for the apparently more interesting protein molecules. Crick was in the right place, in the right frame of mind, at the right time (1949), to join Max Perutz's project at the University of Cambridge , and he began to work on the X-ray crystallography of proteins. X-ray crystallography theoretically offered the opportunity to reveal

14391-533: Was the centre of his intellectual and professional life. Crick spoke rapidly, and rather loudly, and had an infectious and reverberating laugh, and a lively sense of humour. One colleague from the Salk Institute described him as "a brainstorming intellectual powerhouse with a mischievous smile. ... Francis was never mean-spirited, just incisive. He detected microscopic flaws in logic. In a room full of smart scientists, Francis continually re-earned his position as

14514-473: Was the first to identify the 3.6 amino acids per helix turn ratio of the alpha helix. Crick was witness to the kinds of errors that his co-workers made in their failed attempts to make a correct molecular model of the alpha helix; these turned out to be important lessons that could be applied, in the future, to the helical structure of DNA. For example, he learned the importance of the structural rigidity that double bonds confer on molecular structures which

14637-545: Was the first to prove the existence of messenger RNA. None of this, however, answered the fundamental theoretical question of the exact nature of the genetic code. In his 1958 article, Crick speculated, as had others, that a triplet of nucleotides could code for an amino acid. Such a code might be "degenerate", with 4×4×4=64 possible triplets of the four nucleotide subunits while there were only 20 amino acids. Some amino acids might have multiple triplet codes. Crick also explored other codes in which, for various reasons, only some of

14760-649: Was under the direction of Randall. (Randall had refused Crick's application to work at King's College.) Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins of King's College were personal friends, which influenced subsequent scientific events as much as the close friendship between Crick and James Watson . Crick and Wilkins first met at King's College and not, as erroneously recorded by two authors, at the Admiralty during World War II. Crick married twice and fathered three children; his brother Anthony (born in 1918) predeceased him in 1966. Spouses: Children: Crick died of colon cancer on

14883-540: Was under the general direction of Sir Lawrence Bragg , who had won the Nobel Prize in 1915 at the age of 25. Bragg was influential in the effort to beat a leading American chemist, Linus Pauling , to the discovery of DNA 's structure (after having been pipped at the post by Pauling's success in determining the alpha helix structure of proteins). At the same time Bragg's Cavendish Laboratory was also effectively competing with King's College London , whose Biophysics department

15006-475: Was undergoing dramatic changes so that there was a greater need for textbooks, maps, and educational information. We saw the opportunity to diversify into those areas, which are more stable and more profitable than trade publishing." In 1984, Simon & Schuster with CEO Richard E. Snyder acquired educational publisher Esquire Corporation, owner of companies including Allyn & Bacon (and former owner of Esquire magazine), for $ 180 million. Prentice Hall

15129-531: Was written by William Nicholson , and it was produced and directed by Mick Jackson . Jeff Goldblum starred as Watson, with Tim Pigott-Smith as Francis Crick , Juliet Stevenson as Rosalind Franklin , and Alan Howard as Maurice Wilkins . The film won several awards in the UK and U.S., including the 1988 BAFTA TV Award as the Best Single Drama. Francis Crick Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004)

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