One of my favorite things to do when I start studying something new is to go back as far as I can in the literature to look for the primordial kernel of the idea, or field, that I’m interested in. My thesis advisor Jacquito taught me to do this. For example, the idea that plant cells are inflated by turgor pressure, which was part of my thesis, goes back (at latest) to Henri Dutrochet, in the mid-18th century. But it’s hard beat Benno Muller-Hill in his monograph on the lac operon (simply titled, “The Lac Operon”). As a Ph.D. student, Benno purified the lac repressor, which was the first regulatory protein to be purified. Later he became a major historian of science, in particular, he spent a lot of effort investigating how the Nazis perverted science (he was German. also, he was boys with Jon Beckwith). So maybe it’s no surprise that he went preeetttty far back with respect to the intellectual history of the lac operon. Here is the opening line:

1.1 From Noah to Pasteur: Adaptation in Yeast

The story begins four thousand years ago. Noah, having just escaped the deluge, planted a vineyard and produced wine (1)…

Check the photo: best first four references in a science paper ever…