Sir

Linus Pauling, who was celebrated in Gautam R. Desiraju's Millennium Essay (Nature 408, 407; 2000), was born on 28 February 1901. As the hundredth anniversary of his birth approaches, I would like to describe Pauling's comments on the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Shortly before Christmas 1988, Linus was the keynote speaker at the UCLA–Sloan winter school on molecular evolution. He struck up an immediate rapport with my wife, Laura, showing her pictures of his late wife and of his son as a toddler. As we were leaving his lecture to take him back to the faculty guest house, he suddenly asked my wife and me in his uniquely direct way if we ever wondered “why he hadn't solved the structure of DNA”.

We were totally surprised by this, but at the same time were curious to know the answer and asked him why. He said that one day his wife had asked him that question. It had made him think and he replied something to the effect of “I don't know, I guess that I always thought that the DNA structure was mine to solve, and therefore I didn't pursue it aggressively enough”.

Perhaps this isn't the only reason, but on that December night it was Linus's reason. His presence is missed.