My time with Eric Davidson

Abstract

I first encountered Eric Davidson in 1969 when, as a graduate student in the MBL Embryology Course, I heard him lecture. He spoke in general about the role of the nucleus in development. I now realize he organized his lecture on the basis of the introduction to his 1968 book, Gene Activity in Early Development and included some of the ideas published in his 1969 Science paper written with Roy Britten. That paper presented ideas that he built on throughout his career. In my naïve view, it seemed like Eric was belaboring an established tenet. Did not everyone accept that DNA in the nucleus was the genetic material and the blueprint for development? But it was not until much later in my education that I realized he was reacting to ongoing controversies occupying the last 16 years since the publication of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick. To emphasize that controversy I remember that Lionel Jaffe, who studied the role of calcium waves in many kinds of biological processes including development, several times during the lecture refuted Eric's focus on the nucleus.

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