John Edsall and ligand-linked subunit interactions in hemoglobin.

Ever since my days as a graduate student in Berkeley, John Edsall provided a model for scientific rigor. In the 1960s, the authoritative volume by Edsall and Wyman, Biopyhsical Chemistry, was one of the rare books that covered a wide range of the topics of interest in this discipline, and its authors took on the aura of founding fathers. In addition, my thesis adviser, Howard Schachman, often referred to John Esdall’s high standards and would invoke his hypothetical reactions to help chart an appropriate course with respect to issues of scientific ethics. At the level of a poignant detail, I was struck by the multi-authored 1966 article on carbonic anhydrase from the Esdall laboratory w1x in which the different results for the enzyme’s sedimentation coefficient were presented with the name and date of the author responsible. The values differed only slightly, but the paper made a lasting impression on me as the only example I could recall of a multi-authored paper in which individual responsibility was assigned. It would be tempting to speculate on whether the widespread adoption of this practice might have changed the face of biomedical research. After the completion of my thesis, while working in Paris as a post-doctoral fellow at the Pasteur