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Kersten T. Hall , The Man in the Monkeynut Coat: William Astbury and the Forgotten Road to the Double Helix . Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2014. Pp. ix + 242. ISBN 978-0-19-870459-1 . £18.99 (hardback).
Did William Astbury just miss becoming a household name? He certainly would have secured an honoured status in the history of science, not to say world history, had he uncovered the structure of DNA. The chief problem he faced is that he did not do that. The question is, did he come close?
Kersten Hall's biography of Astbury, The Man in the Monkeynut Coat, is primarily a scientific history that follows the career of Astbury through his work on the structure of proteins to his rise to head a research department at Leeds. The title refers to Astbury's experiments in fabricating textiles from vegetable proteins. The book is not intended to take readers very far at all into the culture of early twentieth-century British science and advanced science education. Rather its stated premise is to restore Astbury to a more honorable rank in the history of the race to discover the structure and function of DNA.
Hall has done a marvellous and marvellously detailed job of tracing particular relationships between key British scientists, demonstrating Astbury's central position in those networks. The book is also exceptionally informative about the development of techniques, notably X-ray crystallography, on which Astbury built his very successful...