Watson and Crick
Some of Francis Crick’s doodles of DNA were released this week - Kris pointed me to the article on Slashdot the other day. This reminded me that I should probably mention how we went to a certain talk last week.
It was amazing. Imagine going to see/meeting someone who completely revolutionized your field of interest. Someone who basically established your field. James Watson and Francis Crick are those two men. (And just a side note, I’m by no means giving them ALL the credit.) Without their contributions, I would not be in graduate school studying what I am studying today. It’s a mind-blowing thought. Kris likened it, for him, to meeting Carol Shelby, which I think is a good comparison for car afficinados.
The talk was entitled “Genetic Variation in Humans.” He talked basically about eugenics in modern society, and using Microarray technology to map genetic traits vs. the old method of family tree phylogenies. I won’t really get into the heavy details, as he did not either, but the talk was interesting. More to the point, it was just a wonderful experience - one that I will treasure as part of my scientific career.
