Watson, James D. - The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA - Atheneum: New York, 1967 - First Edition / First Printing / Uncorrected Proof - Uncorrected proofs, in galley format, in wraps as issued. Preceding all other known editions and formats.
“Al Hershey had sent me a long letter from Cold Spring Harbor summarizing the recently completed experiments by which he and Martha Chase established that a key feature of the infection of a bacterium by a phage was the injection of the viral DNA into the host bacterium. Most important, very little protein entered the bacterium. Their experiment was thus a powerful new proof that DNA is the primary genetic material. Nonetheless, almost no one in the audience of over four hundred microbiologists seemed interested as I read long sections of Hershey’s letter. Obvious exceptions were André Lwoff, Seymour Benzer, and Gunther Stent, all briefly over from Paris. They knew that Hershey’s experiments were not trivial and that from then on everyone was going to place more emphasis on DNA.”
This copy as a cup ring to the front, offsetting to the cover and the first two pages, tanning, a small shallow chip to the front lower tip, light creases and some curling. The spiral binding remains firm and intact. Internally the copy is free of writing and other blemishes save for the aforementioned offsetting. The front label is clean and is not chipped although there is a tiny nick to the left hand side. What is interesting is that the label lists the publication date as February 19, 1967 despite the fact that the actual publication date was not in fact until 1968. We are unsure if this was a typo or if there was some form of significant delay in the publication.
We have spent countless hours looking for other copies of this uncorrected proof and have found absolutely nothing. When one searches for the proof only one real image appears and it is this very example listed for sale years ago by another dealer. No other known images are able to be located of any other copies of the uncorrected proof. There are no records in any of the major databases we have searched showing any other copies having sold. There are no other copies currently listed on the market. Shocking, at least to us, no copies appear on OCLC Worldcat in any institutional collections. While signed copies of this work will always be desirable, they will also always be obtainable whereas this represents a unique opportunity for the advanced collector. This is purely speculation, but, it seems reasonable to assume that the amount of surviving proofs for this title may be in the single digits. The low single digits.
Likely the most important work of science published since The Theory of Relativity. The Modern Library ranked The Double Helix as seventh on the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century. In 2012, The Double Helix was named as one of the 88 "Books That Shaped America" by the Library of Congress. The immensity of Watson and Crick’s work is staggering when one considers how it has shaped nearly every aspect of modern life.