Further reading: Classic papers

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Further reading: Classic papers

Introduction

Articles for:
   Chemistry
   Molecular Biology (German)
   Miscellaneous
Other sources of Further reading at this web site

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Introduction

Reading some of the classic papers in a field can be a fun way to explore history -- and to discover the different style of scientific papers long ago. Studying such papers is probably an inefficient way to learn the basics, but it can be a good supplement when you are so inclined.

This page lists sources of "classic papers", in both chemistry and molecular biology. Some are sources on the Internet, some are notes about printed collections. Many of these items are listed on other pages. I will probably add new ones mainly to this page.

There is no particular order to the items within a section.

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Chemistry

The Classic Chemistry site, from Carmen Giunta at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY. Many classic papers -- and a Glossary of Archaic Chemical Terms. http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/

The ChemTeam site includes a section of "Classic papers", dating back to 50 BC. http://chemteam.info/ChemTeamIndex.html.

The two sites listed above are also included in the section of my Internet resources: Chemistry - Miscellaneous page on History.

Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers. The lab notebooks, and other historical materials, of Linus Pauling (and his wife) are available from Oregon State University, where Pauling did his undergraduate work: http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/index.html.

Among the materials there are videos of three lectures by Pauling, on Valence and Molecular Structure, 1957. http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/bond/video/1957v.1.html. The videos are part of the feature section Linus Pauling and the Nature of the Chemical Bond: A Documentary History.

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Molecular Biology

Classic papers in genetics [350 BC (Aristotle) to 1965]: http://www.esp.org/. Scroll down to "Classical genetics". There are also some books, including complete copies of some of Darwin's books (among others).

MendelWeb focuses on Mendel's original paper (German and English versions available), with extensive related resources. Includes a glossary, homework problems, and a place for your comments. http://www.mendelweb.org/

The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. http://darwin-online.org.uk/. From Cambridge Univ.

The three sites listed above are also included in the section of my Internet - Molecular Biology page for Chapter 1.

Updated, April 05, 2008. Profiles in Science, at the National Library of Medicine, featuring the papers of great 20th century scientists. The first scientist featured here was Oswald Avery, who was the first to show that DNA is the chemical of heredity. The second was Joshua Lederberg, who made pioneering discoveries in bacterial genetics. The complete set (as of November 2008, in alphabetical order within each section)...
* Biomedical Research: Christian B Anfinsen, Oswald T Avery, Julius Axelrod, Paul Berg, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin, Donald S Fredrickson, Michael Heidelberger, Arthur Kornberg, Joshua Lederberg, Salvador E Luria, Barbara McClintock, Marshall W Nirenberg, Linus Pauling, Martin Rodbell, Florence R Sabin, Maxine Singer, Sol Spiegelman, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Harold Varmus.
* Health & Medicine: Virginia Apgar, Edward D Freis, C Everett Koop, Wilbur A Sawyer, Fred L Soper.
* Fostering Science & Health: Alan Gregg, Mary Lasker.
More are added from time to time, and existing Profiles are updated; click on their "What's new" for recent changes. http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov. (This site is also included in the section of my Internet - Molecular Biology page for Chapter 2: DNA.)

Books. It used to be common to publish compilations of classic papers. The books contain papers, either complete or abridged, usually with commentary. Here are some that I have, all of which are available in the UCB library. Some may have a more recent edition than the one I list. (Sometimes you see books such as these in used book stores, or book exchanges, such as that at the El Cerrito recycling center.)
* T Brock, Milestones in Microbiology. 1961.
* W K Joklik, Microbiology: A Centenary Perspective. 1999.
* J A Peters, Classic Papers in Genetics. 1959.
* G S Stent, Papers on Bacterial Viruses. 1960.
* J H Taylor, Selected Papers on Molecular Genetics. 1965.

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Miscellaneous

JStor. http://www.jstor.org. An interesting collection of journals. It is not specifically for science, but very broad. The science journals they have tend to be those with multidisciplinary coverage, such as Science and PNAS. However, they also have done some focused projects, such as ecology journals. What makes JStor particularly interesting is that some of their collections include very extensive back files. For example, their collections of Science and PNAS go back to Vol 1 -- over 100 years in the case of Science. Their collection of journals from the Royal Society of London goes back to the mid 17th century. JStor requires a subscription for full access, but most major universities in the US, and many throughout the world, do subscribe, so it is worth a try and worth looking around. (This site is also included in the section of my Library Matters page for More sources of journals online.)

A student in England, upon learning of JStor, wrote me:

Interesting site! Found papers by Thomson, Rutherford, Watson/Crick, etc., and Josephson's Nobel lecture (in Science). Fascinating -- I could waste hours on here!

(He also managed to uncover some papers by Robert Bruner through JStor.)

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