An unlikely cross reference

[ihuxr!lew]

In "The Eighth Day of Creation" by Horace Judson Freeman (Freeman Judson?)
the author compares a conversation of Crick and Watson with Erwin
Chargaff to the conversation of Alaric the Goth with Pope Innocent before
the sack of Rome. I had to look this up in my (abridged) Decline & Fall.

Chargaff was quite the philosophizer, holding that science was a poor
attempt to get at the Truth. He regarded Crick and Watson as intellectual
barbarians.

Similarly, Innocent tried to lecture Alaric on what was proper behavior.
Alaric just laughed.

I highly recommend "The Eight Day ..." it is a readable, informative, and
amusing history of modern molecular biology. It gives new meaning to
the author lines of all those Scientific American reprints on cell
biology.

Lew Mammel, Jr. ihuxr!lew