Sir

Horace Freeland Judson's forthright review of Genes, Girls and Gamow by James D. Watson (Nature 413, 775–776; 2001) reminds me that in the summer of 1953, George Gamow did more than write to Watson suggesting how a linear sequence of four bases could result in different protein chains. He also delivered brilliant lectures at a now legendary astronomy summer school at the University of Michigan that I attended as his PhD student.

It is true that Gamow was funny and that he drank. It is also true that he was a brilliant scientist, devoted friend and concerned teacher, whose intuition exceeded that of any scientist I have known (see, for example, the Millennium Essay “The Big Bang and the genetic code” by Gino Segrè, Nature 404, 437; 2000).

Walter Baade, probably the greatest observational astronomer of the twentienth century, wrote in his book Evolution of Stars and Galaxies (Harvard University Press, 1963) the following: “I believe that George Gamow was the first to suggest the interpretation ... that is accepted today. ... Shortly after the publication of my paper on the two stellar populations, I received a typical message from Gamow on a postcard: 'Please tell me where the lower branch of the color–magnitude diagram joins the main sequence, and I will tell you the age of your Population II stars'.” When Baade replied that not enough data existed, Gamow promptly answered: “With due respect to Schoenberg and Chandrasekhar, I have extrapolated the lower branch thus. O.K. Four to five billion years.” Baade concludes: “This was a guess, of course, and that Gamow hit it so well was an accident, but his remarks really contained the whole story.” Gamow's remarks often contained the whole story, and his guesses were often correct.

This correspondence is the second I have submitted to Nature. The first, sent about 30 years ago, was to protest about a job advertisement for a radio astronomer, which stated that “equally qualified women will be paid x% less than men”, where x was a number whose value (20?) I have forgotten. My contribution was not published because, the then-Editor wrote, in a year or so Australia was to put in place a law outlawing such discrimination.