Biology & Natural History

First edition, first impression, paperback issue. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner on the half title, “It has been great to have the chance to know you. Thanks to Gulbenkian! With my admiration and my sincére amitié, these pages about my life in science. Paris, le 26 Juillet 2012, Nicole le Douarin”. Gulbenkian probably refers to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a philanthropic organisation which may have held a conference or other event at which Douarin and Brenner met.

Recipient Sydney Brenner (1927 - ) has been a leader in the field of genetics almost from the moment he received his doctorate at Oxford in 1954. He joined Francis Crick’s laboratory in 1956, and they did groundbreaking research on how DNA is decoded by cells. Brenner proposed that the nucleotides which comprise DNA (adenine, guanine, thiamine and cytosine) are read by the cell in sets of three called codons, with each codon representing an amino acid (for example, three adenines in a row is the codon for the amino acid lysine). A gene is simply a string of codons that directs the production of a protein molecule from individual amino acids. He also correctly predicted the existence of messenger RNA, the molecule that carries the genetic code from the nucleus to the ribosomes, where the translation process occurs.

Following this work, it was Brenner’s efforts to establish a new laboratory organism for the study of genetics that led to his Nobel Prize. “Beginning in 1965, he began to lay the groundwork to make C. elegans, a small, transparent nematode, into a major model organism for genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research. As a direct result of his original vision, this tiny worm became the first animal for which the complete cell lineage and entire neuronal wiring were known. Today, more than 1,000 investigators are studying C. elegans, and Brenner’s work was further honored when a closely related nematode was named Caenorhabditis brenneri” (Salk Institute biography).

Author Nicole le Douarin (1930 - ) is a leader in the field of developmental biology. She has designed important techniques for studying differentiation in embryos, most importantly the creation of chimeras in which cells from two different species can be individually tracked as they develop into organ systems. Crucially, she used this technique to elucidate the early development of the nervous and immune systems. Douarin has recieved numerous accolades for her work. “In 1988 she was only the third woman in 500 years to be admitted as a member of the College de France. In 1989 she was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Science and in 1990 as a fellow of the Royal Society. She also received the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 1990 and in 1991 she became an officer of the Légion d’Honneur. In 1993 she received the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. She is an honorary fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2002) and was the first recipient of the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize for women in science and biology (2004)” (The Embryo Project Encyclopedia).

First edition, first printing of this interesting and uncommon paper on computing with nanotechnology. From the library of Nobel Prize-winning biologist and computer proponent Sydney Brenner, with his ownership signature on the upper wrapper.

Brenner (1927 - ) has been a leader in the field of genetics almost from the moment he received his doctorate at Oxford in 1954. He joined Francis Crick’s laboratory in 1956, and they did groundbreaking research on how DNA is decoded by cells. Brenner proposed that the nucleotides which comprise DNA (adenine, guanine, thiamine and cytosine) are read by the cell in sets of three called codons, with each codon representing an amino acid (for example, three adenines in a row is the codon for the amino acid lysine). A gene is simply a string of codons that directs the production of a protein molecule from individual amino acids. He also correctly predicted the existence of messenger RNA, the molecule that carries the genetic code from the nucleus to the ribosomes, where the translation process occurs.

Following this work, it was Brenner’s efforts to establish a new laboratory organism for the study of genetics that led to his Nobel Prize. “Beginning in 1965, he began to lay the groundwork to make C. elegans, a small, transparent nematode, into a major model organism for genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research. As a direct result of his original vision, this tiny worm became the first animal for which the complete cell lineage and entire neuronal wiring were known. Today, more than 1,000 investigators are studying C. elegans, and Brenner’s work was further honored when a closely related nematode was named Caenorhabditis brenneri” (Salk Institute biography).

This article, which discusses the use of molecular machines for carrying out computations, would have been of interest to Brenner, who was a proponent of computing from early in his career, though he approached the subject from the opposite angle, using traditional computing to understand molecules, rather than using molecules for computing. He taught himself the TRAC language in the 1960s and used it to write the first program to compare nucleic acid sequences. Soon he had “become so skilled at assembly language programming that I didn’t think twice about altering a Fortran compiler to use with our disc operating system... All this work became valueless when this machine — by then slow, small and obsolete — was junked... I resolved never to become so involved with computers again, but I knew they were going to be essential tools in biology... Some years ago, when I took up computing again, I decided to do better than the first time around. So I learnt the C language and wrote an interpreter for TRAC in C. I have a large suite of programs written in an even flashier TRAC language that I use to study sequences.” (Loose Ends column, Current Biology vol. 5, no 11, 1995).

First US edition, first printing. Originally published in the UK the previous year. From the library of Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner, with his ownership inscription on the front free endpaper, “Sydney Brenner, Cold Spring Harbour, 3 March 2013”. The receipt from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory bookshop is loosely inserted, together with a TSA baggage inspection notice.

Sydney Brenner (1927 - ) has been a leader in the field of genetics almost from the moment he received his doctorate at Oxford in 1954. He joined Francis Crick’s laboratory in 1956, and they did groundbreaking research on how DNA is decoded by cells. Brenner proposed that the nucleotides which comprise DNA (adenine, guanine, thiamine and cytosine) are read by the cell in sets of three called codons, with each codon representing an amino acid (for example, three adenines in a row is the codon for the amino acid lysine). A gene is simply a string of codons that directs the production of a protein molecule from individual amino acids. He also correctly predicted the existence of messenger RNA, the molecule that carries the genetic code from the nucleus to the ribosomes, where the translation process occurs.

Following this work, it was Brenner’s efforts to establish a new laboratory organism for the study of genetics that led to his Nobel Prize. “Beginning in 1965, he began to lay the groundwork to make C. elegans, a small, transparent nematode, into a major model organism for genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research. As a direct result of his original vision, this tiny worm became the first animal for which the complete cell lineage and entire neuronal wiring were known. Today, more than 1,000 investigators are studying C. elegans, and Brenner’s work was further honored when a closely related nematode was named Caenorhabditis brenneri” (Salk Institute biography).

The subject of this biography, Dorothy Wrinch (1894-1976), was a mathematician who was the first woman to receive a doctorate of sciences from Oxford. Mentored by Bertrand Russell, “between 1918 and 1932 she published sixteen papers on scientific methodology and philosophy of science” and began expanding her interests to biology, physics, and many other fields (Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science). Wrinch was a founding member of the Biotheoretical Gathering, a group dedicated to using methods from physics and mathematics to solve problems in biology, and she was awarded a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for this type of research. Inspired by the work of Dorothy Hodgkin and John D. Bernal on protein structures, Wrinch focused on geometrical approaches to determining protein structures. “She developed a new theory of protein structure that combined ideas of mathematical symmetry with the notion of a relatively rare type of chemical bond, the cyclol bond”, which she believed was “the main link between the amino acids that made up proteins” (BDWS). This model was controversial, causing rifts between Wrinch and the British crystallography community, as well as Linus Pauling. It was eventually shown to be only partially correct — cyclol bonds exist but are not the main bonds in proteins — nevertheless, she is important “as an early physical scientist who applied mathematical skills to biological problems. This type of approach eventually led to the rise of molecular biology in the 1930s” (BDWS).

First English language edition, based on the text of the second Russian edition published in 1960. From the library of Nobel Prize-winning biologist and early computing proponent Sydney Brenner, with his ownership signature to the title in red pencil, and what may be a pencilled note in his hand across a small part of the printed title. With the original receipt loosely inserted at the rear.

Sydney Brenner (1927 - ) has been a leader in the field of genetics almost from the moment he received his doctorate at Oxford in 1954. He joined Francis Crick’s laboratory in 1956, and they did groundbreaking research on how DNA is decoded by cells. Brenner proposed that the nucleotides which comprise DNA (adenine, guanine, thiamine and cytosine) are read by the cell in sets of three called codons, with each codon representing an amino acid (for example, three adenines in a row is the codon for the amino acid lysine). A gene is simply a string of codons that directs the production of a protein molecule from individual amino acids. He also correctly predicted the existence of messenger RNA, the molecule that carries the genetic code from the nucleus to the ribosomes, where the translation process occurs.

Following this work, it was Brenner’s efforts to establish a new laboratory organism for the study of genetics that led to his Nobel Prize. “Beginning in 1965, he began to lay the groundwork to make C. elegans, a small, transparent nematode, into a major model organism for genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research. As a direct result of his original vision, this tiny worm became the first animal for which the complete cell lineage and entire neuronal wiring were known. Today, more than 1,000 investigators are studying C. elegans, and Brenner’s work was further honored when a closely related nematode was named Caenorhabditis brenneri” (Salk Institute biography).

Author Boris Avraamovich Trakhtenbrot (1923 - 2016) was a prominent Russian and Israeli computer scientist, best known for discovering and proving the Gap theorem and Trakhtenbrot’s theorem. The present volume, “gives some of the historical aspects of algorithms and goes on to outline the development of the theory of algorithms that has taken place in the twentieth century. in defining the term algorithm, the author considers the close relation between algorithms and computing machines. The reader will need no specific mathematical background beyond intermediate algebra, but he should be able to follow a rather complex train of logical thought” (blurb). This book would have been of particular interest to Brenner, who was a proponent of computing from early in his career. He taught himself the TRAC language in the 1960s and used it to write the first program to compare nucleic acid sequences. Soon he had “become so skilled at assembly language programming that I didn’t think twice about altering a Fortran compiler to use with our disc operating system... All this work became valueless when this machine — by then slow, small and obsolete — was junked... I resolved never to become so involved with computers again, but I knew they were going to be essential tools in biology... Some years ago, when I took up computing again, I decided to do better than the first time around. So I learnt the C language and wrote an interpreter for TRAC in C. I have a large suite of programs written in an even flashier TRAC language that I use to study sequences.” (Loose Ends column, Current Biology vol. 5, no 11, 1995).

First edition, first printing. From the library of Nobel Prize-winning biologist and early computing proponent Sydney Brenner, with his ownership inscription, “Sydney Brenner, La Jolla, Jan 2004” in purple ink on the front free endpaper.

Sydney Brenner (1927 - ) has been a leader in the field of genetics almost from the moment he received his doctorate at Oxford in 1954. He joined Francis Crick’s laboratory in 1956, and they did groundbreaking research on how DNA is decoded by cells. Brenner proposed that the nucleotides which comprise DNA (adenine, guanine, thiamine and cytosine) are read by the cell in sets of three called codons, with each codon representing an amino acid (for example, three adenines in a row is the codon for the amino acid lysine). A gene is simply a string of codons that directs the production of a protein molecule from individual amino acids. He also correctly predicted the existence of messenger RNA, the molecule that carries the genetic code from the nucleus to the ribosomes, where the translation process occurs.

Following this work, it was Brenner’s efforts to establish a new laboratory organism for the study of genetics that led to his Nobel Prize. “Beginning in 1965, he began to lay the groundwork to make C. elegans, a small, transparent nematode, into a major model organism for genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research. As a direct result of his original vision, this tiny worm became the first animal for which the complete cell lineage and entire neuronal wiring were known. Today, more than 1,000 investigators are studying C. elegans, and Brenner’s work was further honored when a closely related nematode was named Caenorhabditis brenneri” (Salk Institute biography).

The subject of this biography, computing pioneer Maurice Wilkes (1913-2010), was responsible for the creation of the first stored program computer, Cambridge University’s EDSAC. This book would have been of particular interest to Brenner, who was a proponent of computing from early in his career. He taught himself the TRAC language in the 1960s and used it to write the first program to compare nucleic acid sequences. Soon he had “become so skilled at assembly language programming that I didn’t think twice about altering a Fortran compiler to use with our disc operating system... All this work became valueless when this machine — by then slow, small and obsolete — was junked... I resolved never to become so involved with computers again, but I knew they were going to be essential tools in biology... Some years ago, when I took up computing again, I decided to do better than the first time around. So I learnt the C language and wrote an interpreter for TRAC in C. I have a large suite of programs written in an even flashier TRAC language that I use to study sequences.” (Loose Ends column, Current Biology vol. 5, no 11, 1995).

Offprint, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the upper wrapper, “Schrader, with kind regards of the author”.

Cell biologist Kristine Bonnevie (1872-1949) was Norway’s first female professor and the first woman member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences. She studied with chromosome researcher Theodor Boveri in Germany, and was awarded a PhD in 1906 for her study of sex cells. “The problem of chromosome halving in the sex cells was not well understood at the time, and her work challenged the classic work of the Norwegian cytologists Alette and Kristian Emil Schreiner. In response to criticism by the Schreiners about her chromosomal work, Bonnevie went to Columbia University where she worked on sex chromosomes in the sea snake, under E. B. Wilson, verifying her earlier work... In 1908, she extended her work to non-dividing chromosomes in related organisms. She continued work on mitosis even after she gave up other work in cytology (Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science).” On Bonnevie’s return to Norway she became a professor of zoology at the University of Oslo (then Christiana) and did significant work on human genetic diseases and fingerprint patterns. “By 1949, almost every Norwegian cytologist had been trained by her” (BDWS). Bonnevie received a number of awards for her social and political work, including being made St. Olaf knight, First Class, for organising deliveries of food to the Norwegian resistance during the Second World War.

The subject of this paper is the maturation of chromatin in the chromosomes of the common onion, chromatin being the cellular material that packages the usually-loose DNA into dense chromosomes in preparation for cell division. The recipient is uncertain, but may have been the prominent chromosome researcher Franz Schrader (1891-1962) or his wife, Sally, also a cytologist in her own right (1895-1984). Franz Schrader was a generation younger than Bonnevie, but it’s possible that this offprint was sent to him sometime after publication, perhaps as part of correspondence between the two scientists. Schrader was certainly well aware of Bonnevie’s work, and in 1935 cited her in the first paragraph of his paper “Notes on the Mitotic Behaviour of Long Chromosomes” in the journal Cytologia.

First edition, first printing. From the library of Nobel prize-winning biologist Sydney Brenner, an early journal article on his Nobel prize-winning work with the nematode C. elegans.

Brenner (1927 - ) has been a leader in the field of genetics almost from the moment he received his doctorate at Oxford in 1954. He joined Francis Crick’s laboratory in 1956, and they did groundbreaking research on how DNA is decoded by cells. Brenner proposed that the nucleotides which comprise DNA (adenine, guanine, thiamine and cytosine) are read by the cell in sets of three called codons, with each codon representing an amino acid (for example, three adenines in a row is the codon for the amino acid lysine). A gene is simply a string of codons that directs the production of a protein molecule from individual amino acids. He also correctly predicted the existence of messenger RNA, the molecule that carries the genetic code from the nucleus to the ribosomes, where the translation process occurs.

Following this work, it was Brenner’s efforts to establish a new laboratory organism for the study of genetics that led to his Nobel Prize. “Beginning in 1965, he began to lay the groundwork to make C. elegans, a small, transparent nematode, into a major model organism for genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research. As a direct result of his original vision, this tiny worm became the first animal for which the complete cell lineage and entire neuronal wiring were known. Today, more than 1,000 investigators are studying C. elegans, and Brenner’s work was further honored when a closely related nematode was named Caenorhabditis brenneri” (Salk Institute biography).

First edition, first printing. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to his colleague John Maynard Smith on the title, “For John Maynard Smith, whose image of Darwin is very much like mine. In friendship and admiration, Ernst Mayr”.

Ernst Mayr (1904-2005) was an ornithologist and one of the 20th-century’s leading evolutionary biologists, a major contributor to the modern synthesis of Darwinian evolution, taxonomy, and genetics. His two great ideas — which have since influenced every aspect of modern biology — were the definition of the species as a population that can only breed within itself, rather than all morphologically similar individuals, and the corresponding theory of peripatric speciation, which explains that speciation occurs when populations of the same species are isolated from each other and evolve differently. Mayr is also credited with developing the modern philosophy of biology, and published a number of books on Darwin and the history and philosophy of evolutionary theories. The present volume is a popular distillation of Darwin’s key arguments and the way he and his supporters viewed evolution by natural selection.

The recipient of this volume, John Maynard Smith (1920-2004) was also a prominent evolutionary biologist. Originally an aeronautical engineer, he took a second degree in biology, studying fruit fly genetics under J. B. S. Haldane at the University of London. Smith was responsible for the application of modern mathematical ideas, in particular game theory, to the study of evolution, and made significant contributions to the modelling of sexual selection. Though they never worked closely together, Smith and Mayr were jointly awarded the Crafoord Prize jointly with George C. Williams.

First and only edition of this charming and early book on microscopy for young people, including advice on how to use microscopes and how to collect and prepare specimens. A nice copy in the publisher’s boards and featuring 5 hand-coloured engravings depicting plant, insect, and mineral specimens, as well as uncoloured plates illustrating how light behaves and microscopes work. Uncommon, particularly in the original binding. WorldCat locates just nine institutional copies, and only three others appear in auction records.

Third printing of this influential work, originally published in 1944. From the library of molecular biologist Erwin Chargaff (1905-2002), with this ownership signature in ink on the front free endpaper.

Chargaff’s work elucidated key concepts about DNA and provided part of the groundwork for Watson and Crick’s discovery of its structure. Chargaff’s rules, as they are now known, state that the quantities of the four nucleotides are always linked - guanine matching that of cytosine and adenine with thiamine, and that the relative amounts of each vary from species to species. These observations strongly hinted that the nucleotides carried the genetic information (rather than the protein components, as had been thought previously), and, most importantly, that DNA could have a double structure - the key to the cell’s ability to both read and replicate it. “Chargaff discussed the results at a tetchy meeting with Watson and Crick in May 1952, and later told Horace Judson, the historian of the discovery of DNA, that ‘they impressed me by their extreme ignorance’” (Guardian obituary). Chargaff’s contributions, along with those of Rosalind Franklin, were ignored by the Nobel Prize committee, leading to his bitterness in later life.

The present text is a significant in our understanding of the physical processes involved in cell division. Franz Schrader (1891-1962) was a Columbia University cytologist who, in 1932, began studying spindles, the structures in cells that form during cell division and pull apart the copied chromosomes. Mitosis “placed what was known of these subjects under searching analysis and offered new directions for research on chromosomal movements” (Cooper, Franz Schrader: A Biographical Memoir, National Academy of Sciences, 1993). An excellent association.