Series 5: Writings, 1937-2003

The Writings Series documents Nirenberg's body of published works, which over the course of his career has grown to nearly 200 articles and book chapters. These articles range in subject matter from ascites-tumor cells to the genetic code to neural synapses to, most recently, Homeobox genes. Nirenberg's curriculum vitae in Series 1: Personal and Biographical include bibliographies. Many of Nirenberg's articles were co-authored with his LBG postdoctoral colleagues; he also collected materials by his peers on related topics that were relevant to his work or of general interest to him. The series includes draft manuscripts, illustrations, negatives, photographs, reprints, and slides; it is divided into two sub-series: Unpublished Manuscripts and Reprints and Research Publications.

The first sub-series, Unpublished Manuscripts, is comprised of the draft versions of written works. The sub-series is further divided into four sub-sub-series: By Marshall Nirenberg, By Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics Personnel, Annotated by Marshall Nirenberg, and Illustrations. The first sub-sub-series contains the drafts of Nirenberg's articles, particularly the poly-U article and "The flow of information from gene to protein," written as a chapter on the genetic code in Aspects of Protein Biosynthesis, edited by Christian Anfinsen. Also of note are the drafts for the series of articles entitled "RNA Codewords and Protein Synthesis" which Nirenberg authored with various members of the LBG staff from 1964 to 1968. These drafts are arranged alphabetically by article title. While Nirenberg often recycled portions of his papers in his speeches and vice versa, this sub-sub-series only includes drafts of written works. Drafts of Nirenberg's Nobel Prize speech are located in Series 1: Personal and Biographical within the Nobel Prize sub-series. Other speeches and lectures can be found in Series 6: Professional Activities.

Nirenberg often served as editor for papers written by the LBG staff, even when he was not a co-author. Drafts of works independently written by LBG personnel are found in the second sub-sub-series, By Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics Personnel. These drafts often contain annotations, comments, and corrections by Nirenberg. The materials in the third sub-sub-series, Annotated by Nirenberg, also contain markings and commentary. Both of these sub-sub-series are arranged alphabetically by folder title. As each folder contains drafts of numerous articles, the folder title is derived from the first word of the first and last articles in each folder.

The Illustrations sub-sub-series contains drawings, negatives, photographs, and slides used by Nirenberg and the LBG staff for publications as well as for presentation slideshows. According to Nirenberg, the slides were numbered consecutively as they were made, and then reused over and over again, resulting in several series of numbered slides. Unlike the drafts, the slides used for speeches were the same as those used for publications, making them nearly indistinguishable; therefore all slides have been grouped together numerically. Whenever possible, implied titles have been provided for non-labeled illustrative materials and marked with square brackets [ ].