This book relates how, between 1954 and 1961, the biologist Seymour Benzer mapped the fine structure of the rII region of the genome of the bacterial virus known as phage T4. Benzer's accomplishments are widely recognized as a tipping point in mid-twentieth-century molecular biology when the nature of the gene was recast in molecular terms. More often than any other individual, he is considered to have led geneticists from the classical gene into the molecular age.
Drawing on Benzer's remarkably complete record of his experiments, his correspondence, and published sources, this book reconstructs how the former physicist initiated his work in phage biology and achieved his landmark investigation. The account of Benzer's creativity as a researcher is a fascinating story that also reveals intriguing aspects common to the scientific enterprise.

This fascinating book is an investigation of scientific creativity. Following the research pathways of outstanding scientists over the past three centuries, it finds common features in their careers and their landmark discoveries and sheds light on the nature of long-term experimental research. Frederic Lawrence Holmes begins by discussing various approaches to the historical study of scientific practice. He then explains three kinds of analysis of the individual scientific life: broad-scale, which examines the phases of a scientist's career - apprenticeship, mastery, distinction, and maturity - over a lifetime; middle-scale, which explores the episodes within such a career; and fine-scale, which scrutinises laboratory notebooks and other data to focus on the daily interplay between thought and operation. Using these analyses, Holmes presents rich examples from his studies of six preeminent scientists: Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, Claude Bernard, Hans Krebs, Matthew Meselson, Franklin Stahl, and Seymour Benzer. The similar themes that he finds in their work and careers lead him to valuable insights into enduring issues and problems in understanding the scientific process.

In 1957 two young scientists, Matthew Meselson and Frank Stahl, produced a landmark experiment confirming that DNA replicates as predicted by the double helix structure Watson and Crick had recently proposed. It also gained immediate renown as a "most beautiful" experiment whose beauty was tied to its simplicity. Yet the investigative path that led to the experiment was anything but simple, Frederic L. Holmes shows in this masterful account of Meselson and Stahl's quest. This book vividly reconstructs the complex route that led to the Meselson-Stahl experiment and provides an inside view of day-to-day scientific research--its unpredictability, excitement, intellectual challenge, and serendipitous windfalls, as well as its frustrations, unexpected diversions away from original plans, and chronic uncertainty. Holmes uses research logs, experimental films, correspondence, and interviews with the participants to record the history of Meselson and Stahl's research, from their first thinking about the problem through the publication of their dramatic results. Holmes also reviews the scientific community's reception of the experiment, the experiment's influence on later investigations, and the reasons for its reputation as an exceptionally beautiful experiment.

This comprehensive volume completes Frederic Holmes's notable and detailed biography of Hans Krebs, from the investigator's early development through the major phase of his groundbreaking investigation, which lay the foundations upon which the modern structure of intermediary metabolism is built. With access to Krebs's research notebooks as well as to Krebs himself through more than five years of personal interviews, the author provides an insightful analysis of Hans Krebs and of the scientific process as a whole. The first volume, published in 1991, covered Krebs's formative years in Germany, his work with Otto Warburg, and his discovery of the urea cycle in 1932. This second volume reconstructs the investigative pathway and the professional and personal life of Hans Krebs, from the time of his arrival in England in 1933 until 1937, when he made the discovery for which he is best known-the formulation of the citric acid cycle. Holmes portrays Krebs's activity at the intimate level of daily interactions of thought and action, from which the characteristic patterns of scientific creativity can best be seen. Holmes's fascinating portrait of Krebs integrates the great scientist's investigative pathways with his personal life. The result is an illuminating analysis of both man and scientist that will be of interest to biochemists and historians of science.

This is the first volume of the definitive biography of Hans Krebs, one of the world's foremost biochemists. It begins with the early work of Krebs in Germany, where, working with Otto Warburg, he discovered the urea cycle in 1932. This early achievement, coupled with the discovery of the citric acid cycle, are viewed as the foundations upon which the modern structure of intermediary metabolism is built. During the writing of this fascinating history, the author not only had access to a complete set of Krebs' key laboratory notebooks, but to the man himself through five years of insightful interviews. Holmes captures Krebs' activities at a level of intimacy that reveals scientific creativity at work. The story weaves together the investigative pathway with the professional and personal life of the investigator. The Krebs biography is certain to fascinate biochemists and historians of science alike.

Through his development of quantitative experimental methods, the chemist Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) implemented a principle that many regard as the cornerstone of modern science: in every operation there is an equal quantity of material before and after the operation. The origin of Lavoisier's methods, however, has remained a missing piece in this remarkable episode of scientific history, perhaps because the talented young scientist himself was not prepared for the journey his discoveries would set before him. In this book, Frederic Holmes suggests that Lavoisier gradually came to understand the nature and power of his quantitative method during the year 1773, when he began to carry out a research program on the fixation and release of airs. Drawing upon Lavoisier's surviving laboratory notebooks, Holmes presents an engaging portrait of a scientist still seeking the way that would lead him to become the leader of one of the great upheavals in the history of science. Holmes follows Lavoisier day-by-day at work in his laboratory over a course of several months. The scientist's resourcefulness and imagination spring to life in this account, as does his propensity to make mistakes, which taught him as much as his successes. During the course of this odyssey, Lavoisier saw his early theory of combustion collapse under the weight of his own efforts to provide experimental evidence to support it. In compensation, he acquired a method and the hard-won experience on which he would later construct a more enduring theoretical structure. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.