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Jefferson Surgical Solutions

We mourn our life heroes and their contributions. Those that provided comfort and joy, and those that provided scientific direction – for me, The Beach Boys and the double helix. Brian Wilson, raised in Hawthorne, CA, was the leader of America’s answer to the British musical invasion. He recently passed at the age of 82. He was the creative (yet tortured) musical genius of the band that gave us early simple songs like “California Girls,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Surfer Girl,” and “I Get Around.” Songs of cars, rolling waves (turn the double helix on its side) and summer. Later, he composed complex and innovative songs like “Good Vibrations” and “Surf’s Up.” During their youthful and clean-cut heyday from 1962 to 1966, The Beach Boys placed 13 singles in the Billboard Top 10, with three #1 hits. Their apex musical achievement was the 1966 album “Pet Sounds,” perennially included in any pop music aficionado’s list of best albums ever released. Brian and The Beach Boys provided us up-tempo, positive, emotional messages of love, joy, hope, and sunshine. Their concerts were amazing. I know, I saw them first in 1968, and many times thereafter – singing the lyrics to every song. For many of us, summer was The Beach Boys.

James Watson, who also recently died (age 97), won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962 along with Francis H.C. Crick and Maurice H.F. Wilkins for their discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. Their original, barely one-page report was published in Nature. We learned about it in high school chemistry, always pairing the bases A with T and C with G. The world of science (and inheritance) was shaken, and the domains of molecular biology and molecular genetics had a sound scientific basis, which would subsequently lead to the Human Genome Project, which Watson led. Watson, who grew up on the south side of Chicago, graduated from the University of Chicago and received his PhD from Indiana University in 1950. His work with Crick and others was done in England at Cambridge University. He was known as a difficult individual, and later in life espoused unfounded theories that challenged scientific orthodoxy and embraced racism. Yet the elucidation of the double helical structure of DNA was a groundbreaking achievement, with enormous consequences for medicine and mankind.

Neither Brian Wilson nor James Watson led perfect, unblemished, noncontroversial lives. But their contributions to humankind, although in vastly different areas (music and science), have had an immense positive impact on many. May their memory be a blessing.

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