Five Decades In Molecular Graphics: From Pen-And-Ink To Star Trek Ii And Beyond

Robert Langridge, University of California, San Francisco

Stevenson Hall 1300
12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

When Watson and Crick proposed their model for DNA in 1953 their computer was a slide rule and the three dimensional visualization tools were wire models. As a graduate studentworking on DNA in Wilkins lab in 1954 my tools were still wire models, mathematical tables, a slide rule and a desk calculator. The illustrations for publications were pen-and-inkdrawings. In late 1956 I programmed the first application of a digital computer to DNA, using the IBM 650, but the visualization tools were unchanged. The application ofinteractive three dimensional computer graphics to molecular biology began in late 1964, with the use of the DARPA-funded three-dimensional display system at Project MAC, MIT, by Levinthal at MIT and myself at Harvard. In the following years computer graphics became an integral part of research on DNA and protein structure and in the design of therapeutic drugs. As a by-product, numerous TV programs and even one major motion picture made use of the graphics prepared at my NIH-funded Computer Graphics Laboratory, first at Princeton and later at UCSF.