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CORVALLIS - Oregon State University Special Collections will launch on Feb. 21 a new website, "Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA: A Documentary History." The website, at http://osulibrary.orst.edu/specialcollections/dna, explores one of the greatest scientific achievements of the 20th century - the discovery of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, the basic foundation of life.

This site offers researchers, reporters, historians and the general public an entirely fresh perspective, as well as giving them their first look at hundreds of original letters, lab notes, photographs and manuscripts integral to the saga.

"This site is for anyone interested in the DNA story," said Clifford Mead, head of Special Collections at OSU. "General users can benefit from an interesting site that shows history in the making, through the words of the participants. The site also offers a comprehensive set of links to other DNA sites, as well detailed information on all the major players."

"But it goes deeper," Mead added. "This site makes available for the first time the raw material of this important piece of history."

More than 800 original letters, manuscripts, photographs, audio-clips and video excerpts - many never before available outside of archives - form the heart of the site. They include a number of important and unique items, such as:

• An extremely rare prepublication typescript of James Watson and Francis Crick's groundbreaking DNA paper;

   

• A one-of-a-kind prepublication typescript of Rosalind Franklin's DNA paper, published in the same issue of "Nature" as Watson and Crick's, with handwritten additions by Franklin;

   

• Linus Pauling's contemporaneous laboratory notes outlining his DNA work, and a much-corrected manuscript of the paper relating his famously mistaken structure;

   

• Scores of manuscript letters written at the time, including correspondence between all the major players in the race for DNA.

The original documents are tied together with a unique narrative of the discovery from the largely unknown viewpoint of the major "loser" in the race, Pauling. A comprehensive, day-by-day account of all of Pauling's personal and professional activities in the years 1952 and 1953 is included as an adjunct to the main DNA narrative, with scanned images of documents and photographs accompanying the text.