50 years ago
In the right conditions, many proteins spontaneously and reversibly fold into their biologically active conformation ... Such observations have appropriately been interpreted as evidence that the linear sequence of amino acid residues … carries all the necessary information for directing the folding process, and it is just a short step to speculation that artificial synthesis or genetic engineering of novel sequences will lead to conformations with novel catalytic and control functions. But which sequences will lead to the desired conformation, and achieve it in reasonable time? … What does seem clear is that the final stages of folding will be the most difficult to ... predict ... [S]uccess will owe as much to the size and speed of future generations of computers as it does to the programs and data fed to them. But it is remarkable that one can now discuss the difficulty of predicting the final stages of folding, not the folding as a whole.
150 years ago
In reference to the controversy … about Sir I. Newton’s calling his laws of motion “axioms,” it is to be observed that there is a certain ambiguity in the word ... Whatever may be considered the ground of Euclid’s “axioms” so called, Euclid himself did not apply that name to them; but the first nine he called “common notions,” and the last three ... he placed among the postulates … and heads them with “let it be granted.” Now it is clear, from Newton’s own words, that in calling his Leges motûs “axioms,” he does not imply that they are necessary judgments, but that … they are postulates, like Euclid’s last three “axioms.” In our modern use of the words “axiom,” “axiomatic,” there is always implied the ground why a proposition is demanded as granted, viz., because its necessity is self evident; but this wider use is not required by etymology, or (I think) in interpreting all ancient writings.
