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1 leaf, xvi, 226 pp; illus. Original cloth. Spine sunned. Very Good. First Edition. SIGNED BY JAMES D. WATSON TO SALVADOR LURIA AND ZELLA LURIA: "To my greatest supporters/ Salva and Zella/ Jim/ Jim". NOTE: A brief essay on the greatness of this copy, so you know why it costs more than other signed copies. Prior to about 2000 it was not easy to get a signed copy of Watson's The Double Helix. Watson would not even accept money from booksellers for his signature. But then Watson wrote three books between 2001 and 2007 and went on book signing tours for each one. He signed not only his new book, but also other books, including copies of the first edition of The Double Helix. Ever since then, the market has been plentifully supplied with signed copies of The Double Helix. You can even buy copies signed by both Watson and Crick, or all three Nobel laureates from 1962: Watson, Crick, and Wilkins. BUT very few of these signed copies goes back to 1968 when The Double Helix was published, and none of them is a presentation copy to someone who mattered in Watson's scientific career. Except this copy is. After graduating from the University of Chicago, Watson chose to go to Indiana University for graduate school, where Salvador Luria became his adviser. Luria was a member of the "phage group", and it was through Luria that Watson, while still a grad student, became a member of that group, which included Max Delbrück and others who were the first generation of molecular biologists. This copy of The Double Helix is the one Watson presented to Salvador Luria and his wife Zella, with a very personal statement: "To my greatest supporters". Watson signed his name twice, presumably because he was presenting the copy to two people. I won't argue with someone who claims a copy presented by Watson to Max Delbrück or to Francis Crick would be better (I do not know where those copies are). But the connection between Watson and Luria precedes either of those relationships. In the year after The Double Helix was published, Salvador Luria shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1969 with Max Delbrück and Alfred D. Hershey "for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses." The blue cloth of this book is very prone to sunning. The dust jacket on this copy was discarded at some point, with the inevitable result that the spine is sunned. I mention this only because, even though someone could now add a dust jacket to this copy, as soon as an added dust jacket is removed, it will be obvious that it was not part of this copy from birth. A dust jacket would have prevented the sunning (except maybe at the very top and bottom of the spine where sunning has still occurred on some copies that have had their dust jackets from birth).
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