James Dewey Watson (b. 1928), Francis H.C. Crick (1916-2004), Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004), Alexander Stokes (1919-2003), Herbert R. Wilson, Rosalind E. Franklin (1920-1958) and Raymond G. Gosling (b. 1926).

'Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids; A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid'; 'Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids'; 'Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate', offprint from: Nature, vol. 171, pp.737-750. [London]: Fisher, Knight & Co., Ltd [for Macmillan & Co., Limited], 1953.

First edition, the rare three-paper offprint issue. The first published account of the molecular structure of DNA. When Watson and Crick’s paper was submitted for publication in Nature, Sir Lawrence Bragg, the director of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, and Sir John Randall of King’s College agreed that the paper should be published simultaneously with those of two other groups of researches who had also prepared important papers on DNA: Maurice Wilkins, A.R. Stokes, and H.R. Wilson, authors of 'Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids,' and Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling, who submitted the paper 'Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate.' These three papers were then published in Nature under the general title 'The Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids', the offprint of which is the present lot. Grolier, Medicine, 99; Dibner, Heralds, 200. Garrison-Morton 256.3.

Octavo (210 x 139mm). Half-tone and line illustrations. Original stapled self-wrappers (a fine copy). Provenance: Stephen Neidle, CRC Biomolecular Group, King’s College, London. [Sold with:] typed letter signed by Wilkins to Neidle, 16 January 1985, inviting him to the meeting at King’s on 14 February to commemorate Sir John Randall, head of the Biophysics Research Unit at King’s which included Franklin and Wilkins (a typed programme of the meeting is also included). [And:] F. Crick, ‘The Structure of the Hereditary Material’, offprint from: Scientific American, October 1954. '[This paper provides] An account of the investigations which have led to the formulation of an understandable structure for DNA. The chemical reactions of this material within the nucleus govern the process of reproduction' (abstract). [And:] 'Nucleic Acids', offprint from: Scientific American, September 1957. 'These polymers appear to carry the pattern of living matter from one generation to the next. Their basic chain consists of sugars joined by phosphates. Attached to the sugars, in turn, are bases.' This was controversial, as explained by two photocopies of letters included in the lot between Linus Pauling and Crick, 13 and 24 September 1957, in which Pauling points out, and Crick accepts, that in the DNA structure the two nucleobases guanine and cytosine are joined by a triple hydrogen bond, not a double one.

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