Best Nonfiction Books: The Double Helix

Wikipedia Commons-Madeleine Price Ball

The Guardian has been publishing their list of "Greatest Nonfiction Books of All Time". I don't agree with all their selections. However, yesterday they highlighted "The Double Helix" a book I would definitely endorse as worthy of this list.

The Double Helix outlines the efforts of Jim Watson (24 years old) and his older colleague Francis Crick (35 years old) in the DNA structure discovery.

Watson and Crick were members of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. They met regularly at the Eagle pub at Cambridge University.

Their teamwork highlights the value of a multidisciplinary approach to importart complex problems.

Watson was a zoologist while Crick was a biophysicisit. Working together across disciplines they cracked a decade old science challenge.

The Guardian summary of The Double Helix is here.

The Guardian list of top 100 nonfiction books through number 15 is here.

The molecular model reproduced here is from the Wikipedia Commons authored by Madeleine Price Ball.

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