Ah the answer to my question about the contribution to Delbruck and Schrodinger
(in an email I hadn't got round to reading).
Obviously this is important, but only to specialists in a few areas. The double
helix means nothing to behavioural biologists or ecologists, and little to
classical genetics, taxonomy or even organic evolution. it was of course very
important to the field of molecular biology which is now an enormous field
because of this break though.
However to claim that these two worthies as biologists is similar to saying that
Rutherford was a geologist because he recognised the possibility of radiometric
dating (even though Homes and Phillips were the people who actual developed the
techniques. Radiometric dating revolutionised our understanding the geologic
time, but whole areas of geology would have continued to advance without it.
Jon
Moorad Alexanian wrote:
> Astronomy is observational, physics is experimental and so it was more
> Galileo than anyone else. I have published papers on the Big Bang but I
> must say I do not know how all came into being. I am more at easy with
> experimental science rather than forensic science. Delbruck and
> Schrodinger paved the way for the double helix, which is fundamental to
> making biology more like physics. Moorad
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Apr 05 2001 - 19:26:33 EDT