The Notebooks from Sir Thomas Richard Beacon (1927-1994) Beacon's private notebooks clearly visualize his discovery of the location of the human 'Word Gene' D2433. Click on the notebook to view some examples.

From his private notebooks that were released by his wife in 1996, we can clearly follow Thomas Beacon's quest in tracing the existence and the location of the gene that accounts for our ability to speak. Because he also was a keen literature fan, he found out that the author William S. Burroughs (who became a good friend of the family) 'jokingly' referred to the existence of an evolutionary mutation by a virus ("Language is a virus from outer space.").

left: An example of a digital gene chart (Southern Blotting technique)   The notebook that is most important (from a staggering series of 254!) is number 28: where Beacon constructed the foundations for global genetic research that is still going on today. In this notebook he scribbled down the exact location of the gene D2433 (page 12, see picture); "the gene that will change the face of the earth," according to Beacon.   In later research - testing the DNA samples of relatives, friends, primates and parrots, and studying more than 1000 gene charts ('DNA fingerprints') - Beacon also detected that most humans indeed carry gene D2433: but some don't! Like in all primates, this 'Word Gene' is missing, but these people don't seem to have a problem speaking. We will elaborate on this phenomena here. right: Thomas Beacon's notebooks: click on the images to see more.

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