Editorial

Confluence of two or three rivers is called 'Sangam' in India. It is considered a specially sacred place. When the mainstreams of science mingle together, the output can be tremendous. When specialisation becomes unidirectional thinking, it acts as blinkers of a horse. What is important is synergetic interaction.

According to Niels Bohr, one has to push the analysis of the mechanism of living organisms as far as that of atomic phenomena. According to Bohr "We should scarcely expect to find any features differing from the properties of inorganic matter".

This is exactly what Francis Crick tried to do with his X-ray diffraction studies of DNA. A physicist by training and a physicist by inclination, the future Nobel laureate was rejected for graduate studies both in Harward and Caltech, It is only a reflection on the method of judgement of the abilities of a person. Perhaps, this very rejection could have steeled his will to succeed. But every single student in India has to remember this lesson that a failure is not the end of the road to success.

In combination with Watson, a biologist, Crick attacked the problem of finding out the structure of DNA.The great Linus Pauling, a winner of two Nobel prizes, unknowingly gave them inspiration to work harder. It was the fear that Pauling can tackle this problem faster! Treating failures as stepping stones, with perfect understanding between the two, they did not stop till they succeeded.

Wilkinson was another physicist, (X-ray crystallographer) who also independently contributed for unraveling the structure of DNA and shared the prize with Crick and Watson in 1962, For success in science, Max Delbruck's idea of "inspired sloppiness" of not making experiments too perfect to miss the unexpected, proved to be a winner. Delbruck and his collaborator Luri won the Nobel prize in Biology in 1969. Delbruck is a physicist. It was the right mixing of the spirits again.