The First Hundred Years

Abstract

No area of scientific endeavor progresses along a smooth path from inception to resolution. All science is episodic, and most fields are characterized by what are seen, only in retrospect, to have been a series of advances and retreats. Such is the history of attempts to understand the structure and biological function of chromatin. In this brief first chapter, I shall attempt to summarize this tangled story, from the appearance of Miescher’s first paper in 1871 to the moment, almost exactly one hundred years later, when a detailed picture of the molecular structure of chromatin finally began to emerge. Since the principal focus of this book will be on current knowledge of chromatin structure, I do not aim for an exhaustive history. For details, the historically minded reader is referred to a number of excellent books and reviews. I have found Olby’s The Path to the Double Helix (1974) especially useful; but I would also recommend the concise summary by Mirsky (1968) in Scientific American. Views of the state of the field at various times can be gained by perusing the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium volumes for the 1941, 1947, and 1973 conferences, Volume 1 of the Symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology (1947), and the collection of papers, The Nucleohistones, edited by J. Bonner and P. Ts’o in 1964. However, the best source is, as always, the original literature.