Abstract
We discuss a less known aspect of Feynman’s multifaceted scientific work, centered about his interest in molecular biology, which came out around 1959 and lasted for several years. After a quick historical reconstruction about the birth of molecular biology, we focus on Feynman’s work on genetics with Robert S. Edgar in the laboratory of Max Delbruck, which was later quoted by Francis Crick and others in relevant papers, as well as in Feynman’s lectures given at the Hughes Aircraft Company on biology, organic chemistry and microbiology, whose notes taken by the attendee John Neer are available. An intriguing perspective comes out about one of the most interesting scientists of the XX century.
Highlights
Among the institutions which received a large amount of grants for carrying out projects in molecular biology we find the University of Chicago and Caltech, considered by the Foundation as the most promising centers for developing the new cutting-edge research programs
In the late 1950s, Feynman was deeply involved with a number of physics researches, where he gave important contributions
In addition to studies on quantum gravity (Feynman 1963) and, especially, to his well-known results about the V-A character of weak interactions, the two-component spinor formulation of the Dirac equation (Gell-Mann and Feynman 1958) and the density matrix approach to polaron theory in solid state physics (Feynman et al 1962), his own character led him to devote himself to calculations of the tracking of artificial satellite Explorer II at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Mehra 1994) or even to pedagogical work (as his most famous Lectures on Physics (Feynamn, Leighton and Sands 2005), for example) and popularization (about nanotechnology (Feynman 1960), just to mention one) issues. In any of these topics Feynman excelled but, in our opinion, rather than being the manifestation of a genius at work, this is more appropriately the epiphany of his peculiar curiosity, which brought him to 170 be interested in possible algebraic manipulations performed by computers or other similar, apparently strange things for a well pictured theoretical physicist
Summary
A novel and reliable plaque assay for viruses was established in whole analogy with the phage case (Dulbecco 1966), paving the way to the development of molecular virology All these findings pointed clearly toward the key role played by nucleic acids in the replication and mutation in phage, but this idea remained unexplored till 1953, while protein research being fully pursued by George Beadle and Linus Pauling. Feynman noted that, unlike physics and chemistry, biology lacks a basic foundation of fundamental laws, developed by theory and proven by experiments Lacking such a guiding principle, he organized the material according to scale, ranging from the molecular level to more and more complex systems, up to ecology, i.e. the study of many complex biological system interacting in a closed environment. The course was interrupted by Feynman earlier than expected, so that no further discussion on microbiology is present, nor on the planned ecology section
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