Your cases are excellent in their depth and teaching quality. I had the good fortune to meet both Drs. Pauling and Castle. They did indeed have the famous conversation while traveling by train from a meeting. The other intersting historical item I recently learned came from Vernon Ingram. He did not come to the MRC with the intent of working on sickle hemoglobin. Another researcher had failed in some crystallography work on sickle hemoglobin because of the low resolution at the time. Ingram helped Max Perutz with putting mercury residues on hemoglobin A to improve the crystallographic resolution. Francis Crick then suggested that he look into the question of the difference between normal and sickle hemoglobin, since there was a left-over sample from the failed experiment. Science proceeds in the strangest ways!

Comments submitted 1/22/2001 by:

Kenneth R. Bridges, M.D.
Joint Center for Sickle Cell and Thalassemic Disorders
Department of Hematology
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Boston, MA 02115
kbridges@rics.bwh.harvard.edu

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