Victor McElheny
Victor King McElheny (born 6 September 1935) is an American science writer and journalist, who has covered a wide variety of topics, including the Apollo lunar landing program, molecular biology, astronomy, science in Antarctica, and environmental issues.
From ages 14 to 17, he was a student at
As a Nieman Fellow in 1962–1963, McElheny first met
The close acquaintance between McElheny and Watson, began at an early 1967 ceremony awarding the Rumford Premium of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to Princeton astrophysicist Robert H. Dicke, where Watson told McElheny of discoveries in the field of “repressor” proteins in his Harvard lab. McElheny did a story on this work by Walter Gilbert and Mark Ptashne for The Boston Globe early in 1967, and then did frequent stories on molecular biology, including a full page in The Boston Globe's Sunday edition about the June 1968 Symposium at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). This was just after Watson became CSHL director almost simultaneously with publication of The Double Helix and his marriage to Elizabeth "Liz" Lewis. McElheny attended the literary lunch at the Century Association in New York City for The Double Helix, and a rock and roll party at Jim Watson's Cambridge, Massachusetts, home that in effect celebrated his engagement, and McElheny lunched with Jim and Liz shortly after their wedding. McElheny was several times at Cold Spring Harbor for scientific meetings and meals at the Watsons’ home, and chaired public policy sessions at a 1976 conference on environmental sources of cancer.
In 1978, McElheny left The New York Times after five years as the paper’s technology specialist to join Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as first director of the Banbury Center. He was charged with organizing approximately 20 conferences on environmental health risks, and publishing (as the chief editor) 12 books from the conferences. He worked under Watson’s supervision for four years. In subsequent years, McElheny has visited Cold Spring Harbor many times, particularly to do research for his 2003 biography Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution and also to gather material for his 2010 history of the Human Genome Project for Basic Books. Victor McElheny and his wife Ruth attended celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the double helix at the Waldorf Astoria New York in 2003, Watson’s 80th birthday in 2008, and his 90th in 2018.
In 1982 McElheny joined
Victor McElheny and Brenda Maddox were panelists at a 2003 symposium at the Centre for Life in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Her widely acclaimed book Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA had just appeared. According to Hilary Rose, Watson in his book The Double Helix "systematically stereotyped Franklin, making her out to be a bluestocking and a frump" and "this stereotyping enabled him to erase Franklin's crucial contribution of the X-ray photographs that confirmed the helical structure."[7] McElheny met Hilary Rose and her husband Steven in London in the 1960s and greatly enjoyed conversations in which McElheny's political differences with Hilary and Steven Rose were major. In his famous book, Watson, taking the part of Maurice Wilkins (who might have been a distant relative of Crick’s because Crick's mother's maiden name was Wilkins), took adolescent swipes at Rosalind Franklin in a book that was both designedly and inevitably indiscreet and adolescent. As usual in the real events forming the basis of history, the actuality is a bit embarrassing.[8] However, Watson's The Double Helix conferred deserved and lasting fame on Franklin.
In addition to his long acquaintanceship with Watson, McElheny, starting from the time when he worked for the Polaroid Corporation in 1972–1973, was personally acquainted with Polaroid's genius innovator Edwin H. Land for many years. Land died in 1991 and McElheny completed his biography of Land in 1998.
In the later years of the decade of the 2010s, McElheny pursued his interest in "forced-draft national technological mobilizations, of the sort that would be needed to accelerate efforts to forestall at least some of the damage from
Selected publications
- Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land. Reading, Mass: Perseus Books. 1998.[10][4]
- Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution. New York: Perseus Books. 2003.ISBN 9780738208664. (See DNA.)
- Drawing the Map of Life: Inside the Human Genome Project. New York: Basic Books. 2010.ISBN 9780465032600.
References
- ^ a b c "Victor McElheny, guest". Coast to Coast with George Noory.
- ^ "Victor K. McElheny, NF '63". Nieman Reports (niemannreports.org).
- ^ "About Us". Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- ^
- ^ "Victor McElheny, Research Affiliate". Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- ^ "The Victor K. McElheny Award". Knight Science Journalism, MIT.
- ^ Rose, Hilary (15 June 2002). "In the shadow of men". The Guardian.
- ISBN 978-0-393-32044-2.
- ^ "December 2019 email from Victor McElheny to David Brown quoted in the comments section of the video Victor McElheny - Drawing the Map of Life: Inside the Human Genome Project". YouTube. WGBHForum. 6 September 2012.
- ^ "Review of Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land". Kirkus Reviews. 1998.
- ^ "Review of Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution by Victor K. McElheny". Publishers Weekly. 6 January 2003.
- ^ "Review of Drawing the Map of Life: Inside the Human Genome Project by Victor K. McElheny". Kirkus Reviews. 2010.
- ^ "Victor K. McElheny - Events - Harvard Book Store". harvard.com. 20 July 2010. (promotion of Drawing the Map of Life: Inside the Human Genome Project)
External links
Archives at | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||||
How to use archival material |
- "Victor K. McElheny Papers". Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Libraries, Department of Distinctive Collections (archivesspace.mit.edu).
- "Victor McElheny - Drawing the Map of Life: Inside the Human Genome Project". YouTube. WGBHForum. 6 September 2012.
- "Victor McElheny | Writer Profile". The Harvard Crimson (thecrimson.com).