As Friedrich Miescher lay sick in Davos with TB, his former mentor the distinguished physiologist Carl Ludwig offered him some words of consolation. The German original is shown below, followed by my translation of the highlighted text into English.
‘Ludwig always took part in following Miescher’s fortunes, he also visited him repeatedly in Switzerland and, as Miescher lay ill in Davos, he expressed his feelings in two heartfelt letters.
‘Truly,’ he wrote in one of the two letters, ‘Patience is easier to preach than practice, and I know from my own experience I know what it means to have to renounce work that is full of future potential and which one has come to love. As grievous as it may be for you to be sick, you have the comfort of having achieved everlasting accomplishments; you have made the centre, the core of all organic life accessible to chemical analysis; and however often the cell will be studied and examined during the centuries to come, the grateful descendants will remember you as the ground-breaking researcher.’
From ‘Die Histochemischen und Physiologischen Arbeiten von Friedrich Miescher’ (‘The Histochemical and Physiological Work of Friedrich Miescher’ compiled by Wilhelm His, 1897, Leipzig); p.12.
In the original letter shown below, followed by my translation into English of the highlighted passage, the tragedy of Friedrich Miescher is conveyed beautifully…
‘One of his former students compared him to a ship laden with priceless treasure that, just as it is returning to the harbour, sinks to the bottom of the sea.’
From ‘Die Histochemischen und Physiologischen Arbeiten von Friedrich Miescher’ (‘The Histochemical and Physiological Work of Friedrich Miescher’ compiled by Wilhelm His, 1897, Leipzig); p.2.
Despite having discovered what today we call DNA, the material of heredity, Friedrich Miescher went to his grave an unhappy man – weighed down by a sense of failure and missed opportunity – as this letter to his friend Ernst Böhm shows rather poignantly.
Miescher’s original letter is shown below, followed by my translation into English of the highlighted text:
‘I will never,’ he once wrote to Böhm [his friend, the German pharmacologist, Rudolf Böhm] know the happiness that belongs to the man who has lived up to their station in a harmonious way to the satisfaction of themselves and others, so my basic mood is the uncomfortable feeling of one who has lost a button from their braces.’ On another occasion he said, ‘For years I have to get used to the fact that, given the condition that my workload is four times as great as my capacity to do it, I must go to bed each night feeling like a schoolboy who has not completed his homework.’
Friedrich Miescher quoted in ‘Die Histochemischen und Physiologischen Arbeiten von Friedrich Miescher’ (‘The Histochemical and Physiological Work of Friedrich Miescher’ compiled by Wilhelm His, 1897, Leipzig); p.31.
Physicist and Nobel Laureate Erwin Schrödinger may have become something of a household name thanks to his eponymous thought experiment involving a quantum cat having provided many a plot line for the hit TV science sitcom ‘Big Bang Theory’. But another of Schrödinger’s contributions to science was a short book called ‘What is Life?’ Published in 1944 whilst Schrödinger was a political emigre in Dublin, it explored how a physicist might approach biology and in particular the molecular nature of heredity. In the book, Schrödinger proposed that a molecule, if sufficiently large, might be able to represent biological traits through variations in the physical arrangement of its atoms.
But – he wasn’t the first to do this. For nearly half a century before the publication of ‘What is Life?’, Swiss scientist Friedrich Miescher had proposed a very similar idea, as he lay sick with TB in a Davos sanatorium. Here’s the original letter by Miescher in which he outlined his idea, followed by my translation into English of the highlighted passage…
‘Continuity lies not just in form; it lies deeper in the chemical molecule. It lies in the constituent groups of atoms. In this sense I am, to the utmost extreme, a proponent of the chemical theory of heredity. But one must remember that the properties of the chemical bonds depend in their nature and intensity on the motion of atoms and in these easily degradable biological substances, the intramolecular motion of atoms in comparison with the inertia of the whole molecule is of particularly high intensity and independence, hence their degradability. If, as is easily possible, the protein molecule contains 40 asymmetric carbon atoms, then this would give 240 – in other words, roughly a billion isomers. And this is only one type of isomer in which isomers of nitrogen and unfulfilled valences are not taken into account.
The speculations of Weissmann etc, are plagued by half-chemical concepts which are partly unclear, and partly correspond to an outdated state of chemistry. If, as is easily possible, the protein molecule contains 40 asymmetric carbon atoms, then this would give 240, that is roughly a billion isomers. And this is only one type of isomer which does not take into account isomers of nitrogen or unfilled valences. My theory is more suitable than any other to account for the countless diversity proposed by the chemical theory of inheritance. If a pointed discussion of this question is required, all transitions – whether imperceptible or of the greatest difference, can be thought of in this way.’
Letter LXXVIII 13th October 1893 in ‘Die Histochemischen und Physiologischen Arbeiten von Friedrich Miescher’ (‘The Histochemical and Physiological Work of Friedrich Miescher’ compiled by Wilhelm His, 1897, Leipzig); pp. 122-123.
