In this Twitter thread, Navish Wadhwa of Harvard tells a wonderful story of scientific discovery, including crucial assistance at just the right time from Rob Phillips of CalTech, whom Navish met in the MBL Physiology course.

Wadhwa’s paper recently received the Meselson Prize for “the most beautiful experiment of the year,” given annually by Harvard’s Molecular And Cellular Biology Department. Matthew Meselson, a professor in the department, is also a long-time researcher and faculty member at MBL. His 1958 demonstration, with Franklin Stahl, of semi-conservative DNA replication is often called “the most beautiful experiment in biology” for its elegant design.

I am thrilled to share our paper “Torque-dependent remodeling of the bacterial flagellar motor”, co-authored with Rob Phillips and Howard Berg, published in PNAS. In this thread, I want to share the story behind the paper. https://t.co/zpT0Q40Wwz

— Navish Wadhwa (@NavishWadhwa) May 30, 2019

Photo: Navish Wadhwa (front) with 2017 MBL Physiology course participants on the Gemma. Credit: Navish Wadhwa