This digitised material is free to access, but contains information or visuals that may:<ul><li>include personal details of living individuals</li><li>be upsetting or distressing</li><li>be explicit or graphic</li><li>include objects and images of objects decontextualised in a way that is offensive to the originating culture.</li></ul>By viewing this material, we ask that you use the content lawfully, ethically and responsibly under the conditions set out in our <a href="https://wellcomecollection.cdn.prismic.io/wellcomecollection/d4817da5-c71a-4151-81c4-83e39ad4f5b3_Wellcome+Collection_Access+Policy_Aug+2020.pdf">Access Policy</a>.

42nd Cold Spring Harbor Symposium: 'Chromatin'

Galleries and Reading Room

Library

Shop

Café

Due to essential system maintenance, online requesting will be unavailable from 9pm until midnight on Tuesday 21 April. You can still search the catalogue as usual. We apologise for any inconvenience.

We're running paid user research studies to improve Wellcome Collection online

Take part in research

Correspondence and notes regarding the 42nd Cold Spring Harbor Symposium, entitled 'Chromatin', held at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York, 1-8 June, 1977.

Despite not wishing "to present a formal paper" (Crick to the Meetings Co-ordinator, 22 February, 1977), the file includes:

10 sheets of notes (holograph), commencing: "Hadn't expected to talk";
8 sheets of notes (holograph) headed "Opening Comments" and also beginning with the note "Hadn't expected to talk";
and a notepad (11" x 81/2") filled entirely with notes (holograph) made during the course of the meeting (first dated entry is 2 June and the last entry is 5 June).

A note in the file indicates that Crick also gave a talk ("How Scientists Work") at Cold Spring Harbor on 12 June, 1977.

The correspondence largely comprises letters between Crick and James Watson. On the question of who to invite to the Symposium on Chromatin, see, for instance, Crick to Watson (29 October, 1976): "And now for something completely new. In the last three weeks I have become extremely interested in an obscure Dane called Bak ... He now thinks, as I do, that what he is seeing is a hollow tube and his unpublished data make me believe it to be a super-solenoid .... It may be that the complete hierarchy of helices has now been uncovered, at least for human chromosomes."

Content advisory

42nd Cold Spring Harbor Symposium: 'Chromatin'

Licence and re-use