Emma went on to grumble, “I note that our manuscript was held to a standard of proof that the Schleicher and Fox publication was not. That is, publication of our submission was denied until we could provide proof that the biochemical steps in pigment formation that we identified—and whose identification was used without independent verification by Schleicher and Fox—were catalyzed by enzymes. No such evidence is to be found in their paper. We, however, have now obtained such evidence for two of the three biochemical steps identified in our work.”
She and Joe fussed about the wording of the letter, and finally agreed on the final draft. They signed it and put it in the mail. Emma felt fully justified in writing it, but wondered whether any good could come of it.
They waited for a reply. In the meantime, their mood was darkened further by the news from Europe. Already in April German forces had occupied Denmark and, after a short one-sided war, conquered Norway. Then in May a massive German invasion of Belgium, Holland, and France began. The speed and violence of the attacks were unstoppable. The term Blitzkrieg became part of everyday speech.
By mid-June, as Emma and Joe waited anxiously for a reply from the editor of the American Journal of Genetics, Nazi flags were flying over Paris and the conquest of the Continent by Germany was certain. England lay open to attack and seemed defenseless. Emma and Joe argued: she continued to defend her pacifism, although with wavering confidence, and Joe insisted that Hitler had to be defeated.
“I know it’s an evil regime,” Emma cried, “but I cannot, I cannot bear to see us go to war again. If I were to lose you . . .” And her voice broke and she buried her face in her hands.
FINALLY, IN LATE June the letter came. Emma recognized the return address and carried it unopened over to Joe’s little office next to the organic chemistry lab. They closed the door, and Emma nervously tore it open and read aloud:
“Dear Professors Hansen and Bellafiori:
“I am responding to your letter of May 22nd in which you raise certain questions about the review of your manuscript entitled “Genetic Determination of Biochemical Steps in Carotenoid Pigment Formation in Neurospora crassa”, which was rejected by this journal.
“First, I must state that it would be highly improper of me to reveal the identity of the referees of this, or any, paper. The integrity of the review process is absolutely dependent on the use of anonymous referees, who cannot be expected to give their most honest, candid views, if they knew that their identities would be revealed to disappointed authors. I therefore decline to identify the reviewers of your manuscript.
“I recognize an unusual number of similarities in the content of your manuscript and the paper by Schleicher and Fox in the Proceedings that you reference. This is unexpected, I will admit, but you must recognize that instances of independent and simultaneous research undertakings and discovery do occur. One calls to mind the work of Darwin and Wallace on natural selection in evolution as an example. The coincidence is not per se evidence of misconduct.
“As to the different standards of proof required for your manuscript versus that that published by Schleicher and Fox, I can only point out that various journals use differing review procedures so that discrepancies in the standards applied inevitably occur. You may be unaware that the Proceedings only requires that a paper be approved and submitted by a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, who assumes full responsibility for the quality of the science. The American Journal of Genetics always seeks the views of at least two anonymous expert referees.
“If you have indeed addressed the scientific criticisms of the previous manuscript as regards evidence of enzymatic catalysis of reactions of pigment biosynthesis, I would encourage you to submit a revised manuscript documenting this new evidence. This is significant work, and I can assure you of a fair and objective review for publication.”
Emma and Joe sat in silence for a moment.
“I think he ducked your question,” Joe said, with barely controlled anger. “If Schleicher had not been a reviewer, he could have told you that, couldn’t he? That doesn’t reveal who the reviewers were. The fact that he didn’t do that means that Schleicher was a reviewer, don’t you think?”
“Maybe.” Emma sighed. “I guess we’ll never know for sure. I’ve thought about this. Even if he was a reviewer, what could we do about it?”
“Tell the whole scientific world!”
“You think they would listen? The two of us from a little Midwestern college? And he’s a big Princeton professor. I don’t know. Maybe we should just lick our wounds and go on. The letter hints pretty strongly that they would publish our paper now. With the new evidence.”
“Yeah, well, I think he’s got a bad conscience, so now he’s willing to take a paper that he should accepted before.” Joe stalked around from behind the desk and grabbed Emma by the shoulders. “We—you—discovered something really big, damn it, and now we get to publish a me-too paper.”
“Well, it’s a good paper. Let’s publish it. It’s better than nothing.”
“What about the Pigment C to A conversion? We never demonstrated it in vitro.”
“No, but the evidence that enzymes catalyze the other two steps is solid. You’d have to be pretty perverse to argue that the first two steps are catalyzed by enzymes and the last one isn’t. C’mon. I’m going to write the revision.”
Joe had to leave for six weeks of summer military training the following week. This annual disruption in their lives had not been too difficult for Emma in the past because she generally had little or no teaching duties during the summer, but this year the shadow of the series of disastrous defeats of the Allies in Europe and the growing intensity of aerial attack on England filled Emma with anxiety. If America joined the war, she would surely call up the reserve officers, Joe among them.
She distracted herself by working on the revision of their manuscript. The fundamental content was the same as in the rejected manuscript except for a new section that contained the proof of enzymatic catalysis of two of the reactions. The pigD and pigB genes, Emma concluded, clearly specified enzymes. Although it was not directly demonstrated, she drew the inference that the pigC1 and pigC2 genes also did so.
In the Discussion Emma reiterated the major conclusion of the paper: that many, perhaps most genes specify enzymes or other proteins, one gene per enzyme. She could not ignore the already published work of Schleicher and Fox, of course, so she mentioned it tersely. She prefaced her words by emphasizing that her and Joe’s work had been conducted “independently and without any knowledge of the simultaneous research of Schleicher and Fox.” The complete agreement between the results of the two independent investigations, she stated “provides strong confidence in the validity of their conclusions, which we agree have far-reaching consequences.”
The revised manuscript was ready for Joe’s reading when he returned from military training. He read it hastily, as though he had somehow lost interest in it, and told Emma to submit it to the American Journal of Genetics. He was distracted and agitated.
“All the regular Army officers are convinced that we are going to get into it. We’ll never let the Germans take England. And there’s real problems with the Japs out in the Pacific.”
“But Roosevelt has been saying all along that he won’t send our boys into war, that we would just send weapons and aid.”
“Yeah, we’ll see what he says after the election.”
THE 1940 FALL semester at Harrington College seemed superficially like the previous twelve beginnings to the school year of Emma’s experience. Young men and women filed along campus sidewalks. Freshmen wore green beanie caps, as they had for years. Biology students crowded Emma’s office seeking advice or permission to enroll in one of her courses. The many mature shade trees underwent their annual fall riot of yellow, brown, red, and orange, then dropped their leaves in crisp, oaky-smelling piles.
But there was nervousness in the air. Reports and photographs of the horrendous bombing of English
cities filled the newspapers and radio waves.
Joe fumed at news of Italy’s military misadventures in North Africa. “Not only are they trampling all over where they have no business, they’re incompetent. It makes me ashamed to be Italian.”
A draft for one year of military service began in October and sent a shiver of unease across the campus.
Joe and Emma taught their classes and tried to live a normal life with Enrico. Both had received raises—the first since they were hired—as the College’s finances improved. Papers for Joe’s promotion to Associate Professor were forwarded to the Dean. The opposition he had expected from Professor Köhler had not materialized. Perhaps he had forgotten his anger at Emma’s attack on Hitler’s racial policies; perhaps even he had turned in disgust away from the Nazi regime.
And they waited. Waited for news from the editor of the American Journal of Genetics. Finally, in November the decision letter arrived. Emma tore it open, not even waiting to take it to Joe’s office. She feared an explosion if the revised manuscript was rejected.
The manuscript was accepted for publication. One reviewer expressed concerns about the evident duplication of previously published findings, the editor wrote, but another reviewer recommended acceptance of the paper “as a welcome confirmation and extension of the ground-breaking work of Schleicher and Fox. The more detailed genetic analysis and direct evidence for enzymatic catalysis of the steps in pigment formation are valuable contributions.” Because the editor was “aware of the simultaneous and fully independent conduct of your research and the far-reaching consequences of your conclusions,” he intended to disregard the first reviewer and accept the paper.
“Why doesn’t it feel more satisfying?” Emma asked after Joe had read the letter. “This is beautiful, important research that was done under very difficult circumstances.”
“It is, sweetheart,” Joe replied. He was calm; all of his anger had drained away. “I’m proud of it, of us. But in science, priority is everything.”
CHAPTER 21
1941 -1942
FOR A TIME it was possible to believe that, despite the horrors of war across the oceans, life for Emma and Joe would be happy and peaceful. The dreariness of winter gave way to the warmth, tender greens, and cheerful blossoms of spring on the campus and streets of Harrington. The pleasure of introducing her students to the wonders of biology, of watching their faces glow with new understanding, returned for Emma after the depressing events of the previous year. Enrico was now reading simple children’s books, but still insisted on curling up with Joe or Emma for readings at bedtime. Winnie the Pooh was a favorite. Emma had little time for genetic experiments, but worked with Joe on attempts to isolate precursors to the colored pigments that they assumed were accumulated in her albino mutants.
Their Am. J. Genet. paper appeared in print in March, and they received a surprising number of requests for offprints. The Dean assured Joe that his promotion to Associate Professor with tenure needed only final approval from the Board of Trustees, and that the new paper made the case certain. He also told Emma that he intended to begin the review of her credentials for promotion to full Professor.
“It should have been done before now. You and Professor Bellafiori have set a new standard for our faculty,” he remarked during a private meeting in his office. “Most have been content to simply teach their classes or perhaps write a textbook, but you have proven that Harrington faculty can also conduct serious scholarly work, and can do so without neglecting your teaching.”
The news removed a little of the sting of having lost the claim of priority for their discoveries about the mechanism of gene action to the Princeton group.
EMMA HAD BEEN dreading this moment. She sat nervously in a large ornate meeting room in Chicago’s Conrad Hilton Hotel awaiting the start of the conference on new concepts in genetics. She had traveled to Columbus to find an appropriate suit for the occasion and finally settled on a navy blue one with white piping on its wide lapels and a small white pillbox hat instead of the wide brimmed fedoras that were now in style. It had a knee-length skirt and was snugly tailored with wide shoulders and narrow waist, buttoned over a white blouse and a pale blue scarf at the neck: fashionable, but subdued—and too warm in this stuffy room. She needn’t have bothered. She was the only woman in the room, and the many men there only glanced at her briefly, as though she were out of place and of no consequence.
Professor Philip Schleicher strode to the lectern with a confident, even aloof, manner. Until this moment she had no idea what he looked like. He had arrived in the hall just before the session began. He was a tall, slender man with silver hair, dressed in an elegant three-piece gray suit and black bow tie. He adjusted his glasses, softly cleared his throat, and began speaking in a clear, confident voice. “I wish to present to you today the results of our genetic experiments with the ascomycete Neurospora crassa, experiments which we propose establish a direct biochemical function for genes, namely the specification of enzymes: one gene per enzyme.”
Emma’s fists tightened. She knew what he was going to say. She knew the experiments he would present; she had studied his paper carefully. Oh, yes, she knew the story: it was her story, hers and Joe’s. She knew it was correct. She and Joe had determined the structures, mapped the genes, and proposed the same bold conclusions many months ago. Yet she now had to sit and listen to this man claim it all for his own, and every scientist in the audience would accept his claim without question.
So why was she here, here in this large hotel ballroom at a national genetics conference? To confront Schleicher with her suspicions? To demand an equal share of credit for the important new ideas that he was now expounding? No, she had decided. Provoking a scandal would probably do more harm than good. She would simply tell this gathering of scientific peers what she and Joe had done and how they had done it. And point out that they had done it entirely independently and without knowledge of the work of others. That would have to be sufficient.
“You have to go,” Joe had said when she showed him the invitation to give a research talk at the conference in Chicago in June of 1941. “Just go and present our work. Tell ’em we did it independently. Answer questions. Talk to people. By God, let everyone know that we are co-discoverers of this.”
“Maybe you should give the talk. The invitation was addressed to both of us. If you did it, they’d take it more seriously.”
“Why? Because I’m a man?”
“Yes. You know that’s true.”
“Well, damn it. That’s all the more reason why you should go and give the talk. This is your work. Make them recognize that. Make them take you seriously. If I go, they’ll be distracted. Besides, you were the intellectual driving force behind all this. I was just your chemist.”
“Oh, Joe, you are so much more than my chemist.”
Joe grinned. “I know that. But I’m serious. You should give the talk. You’re the geneticist. This is a genetics meeting. You deserve this recognition. I can talk about the chemistry at the American Chemical Society.”
“But what about Enrico? I’ll have to be gone for three or four days.”
“Go! I’ll take care of Enrico. Besides, if I go to Chicago with you, we’ll have to visit my family and take Enrico along. I’m not up for that whole circus.”
“I’ve never presented a research paper at a national meeting before. It’ll be really difficult. I’ve got to squeeze the whole story into twenty minutes.”
“You can do it. You’re a teacher, a great teacher. Now get to work on it.”
The session on new concepts in genetics was organized with a featured speaker—Schleicher—who was given fifty minutes to make his presentation, followed by four lesser lights, Emma scheduled last among them, who had twenty minutes to give their talks. Each talk was to be followed by a ten-minute discussion session. The arrangement obviously favored the impression that Scheicher and Fox were the discoverers of the new one gene-one enzyme concept and that Hansen and Belle
fiori had merely confirmed it, but the invitation to speak at the conference gave Emma and Joe a chance to gain exposure of their work to the best geneticists in the country. This alone was a unique distinction for Harrington College faculty. Joe was right: the opportunity was not to be declined.
So, here Emma sat sweating in her new suit, waiting for the chance to present her carefully rehearsed talk while Professor Philip Schleicher of Princeton University grandly and sonorously gave his lecture. He projected a transparency slide that showed the chemical structures of the intermediate pigments on the way to the final pigment neurosporoxanthin—Joe’s beautiful structures of Pigments A, B, C and D, but, of course, Schleicher gave them different names—and pronounced, “This, we conclude, is the pathway for the biosynthesis of the fungal pigment, based on our genetic analysis and the structures of the molecules from the chemical literature.”
Emma seethed. He had not even mentioned that Bellafiori and Hansen had first isolated the pigments and determined their structures. In fact, their names were not spoken at all until the very end of the lecture, when Schleicher said, “We were gratified to learn from a recent publication that Hansen and Bellafiori had replicated our experiments, confirmed our findings, and agreed with our conclusions.”
That stung too. The use of the word “replicated” implied that they had simply repeated the work of the Princeton group after the fact and gotten the same results, when Emma believed that the reverse had actually occurred. Schleicher’s presentation was followed by vigorous applause and an excited discussion. Emma listened carefully, but said nothing.
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