Reading anything by Simon Silver is a pleasure, and his erudite and fair-minded review of Craig Venter's autobiography is no exception (Microbe, January 2008, p. 46). I would comment on one small point however. Dr. Silver states that Irwin Chargaff (who usually spelled his name Erwin) found Jim Watson's book The Double Helix (1968) “so offensive that he was unable to move forward with advancing biological understanding.” I knew Chargaff and while he certainly detested Watson's style (and equally Crick's), he was in fact in no position to advance the study of DNA beyond his famous base composition “rules” for the simple reason that it had by then become uniquely a problem in structural biology. Even had Chargaff wanted to enter the race, he was, despite superb talent as a nucleic acid chemist, not operating in the theater of Pauling, Franklin, and Crick. (Moreover, Chargaff's claims, e.g. in Heraclitean Fire, Rockefeller University Press, 1978, p. 102–103, that his base composition rules were a catalyst to Watson and Crick getting the double helix have not been supported by most historians.) Again, these comments concern a minor detail in Dr. Silver's overall fine review.