Historical Perspectives On Contemporary Issues
The DNA Papers
This podcast series illuminates the history of seminal discoveries and research through which we learned about the molecule that has been dubbed as the “secret of life” itself: DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid.
This series progresses from the first discovery of the substance in 1869 to the early 1980s, when scientists devised the techniques for determining the sequence of the units that make up a DNA molecule. Each episode features scholars from different fields: the history of science, the specific areas of science pertinent to the paper being discussed, other humanities and social sciences—such as philosophy, anthropology, sociology of science and STS—and science communication.
Click on the “Resources” tab for information for researchers as well as further readings.
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Episode 1 on Friedrich Miescher and the discovery of nuclein.
Episode 2 on Albrecht Kossel and the discovery of the building blocks of nuclein.
Check back monthly for new episodes.
Photo Credit: DNA Origami. Prof. Mark Szczelkun, University of Bristol.
Neeraja Sankaran introduces the series, which she organized and moderates. She is a historian of science and medicine at the National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR, Bangalore, India. Her work focuses on the recent and near-contemporary history of biomedical sciences. An independent scholar since 2015, she has held both research and teaching positions at universities in different parts of the world, including the United States, Egypt, South Korea, India, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.
See also a collection of Resources.
Closed-captioning available on YouTube.
Recorded October 4, 2022
The first episode of the DNA papers goes back to the nineteenth century when a young Swiss doctoral student, searching for the secrets of life by delving into the chemistry of cells, stumbled on to a hitherto unknown new chemical substance localized in the nucleus of pus cells. He named the substance nuclein; we now recognize it by the commonly used acronym for its chemical name: DNA. Friedrich Miescher reported his discovery in “Uber Die Chemische Zusammensetzung Der Eiterzellen.” [On the chemical composition of pus cells] Medizinisch-Chemische Untersuchungen 4 (1871): 441–60.
Joining us to discuss the significance of Miescher and his discovery are:
- Ralf Dahm, Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) gGmbH / Excellence Center for Life Sciences, Mainz, Germany
- Kersten Hall, University of Leeds
- William C. Summers, Yale University
- Sophie Veigl, University of Vienna
See also a collection of Resources.
Closed captioning available on YouTube.
Recorded January 17, 2022
Image courtesy Wellcome Collection
In episode 2 of the DNA Papers we discuss a cluster of papers from the late nineteenth century by the German physiological chemist Albrecht Kossel, who studied the chemical make-up of nuclein, and found and named its nitrogen-containing building blocks, probably best recognized today by their labels A, T, G, and C. Although the work was deemed sufficiently important by his contemporaries to garner him the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1910, Kossel remains a lesser known figure in the history of DNA, especially among non-German speakers. The papers featured in this discussion are:
Kossel, Albrecht. 1879. “Ueber Das Nucleïn Der Hefe.” [On the nuclein of yeast] Zeitschrift Für Physiologische Chemie 3: 284–91.
Kossel, Albrecht. 1882. “Zur Chemie Des Zellkerns.” [On the chemistry of the nuclei of cells] Zeitschrift Für Physiologische Chemie 7: 7–22.
Kossel, Albrecht. 1886. “Weitere Beiträge Zur Chemie Des Zellkerns.” [Further contributions on the chemistry of the nuclei of cells] Zeitschrift Für Physiologische Chemie 10: 248–64.
Sharing their perspectives on the Kossel’s contributions and their importance are:
Pnina Abir-Am, Brandeis University
Mark Lorch, University of Hull
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
See also a collection of Resources.
Closed captioning available on YouTube.
Recorded on July 12, 2022.
Image courtesy of Wellcome Collection.
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