I've just finished re-reading James Watson's The Double Helix, his somewhat gossipy narrative of the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, one of the most important events in the history of mankind.
It's filled with delightful asides, such as
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
and, speaking of Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA's structure:
[R]eligion...was clearly an error of past generations, which Francis saw no reason to perpetuate.
Watson shows how science is actually done, revealing all the petty jealousies and intrigues among scientists that are familiar to us from just about any endeavor, and he captures the dismay that they feel when it briefly looks like Linus Pauling may have beaten them to the punch.
But woven throughout the narrative is the darkly mysterious figure of Rosalind Franklin. Her work in crystallography was to prove essential to the unveiling of DNA's true character, but she is presented from the start as a cold, uncooperative, unsympathetic person. In fact, she is one of the few people that Watson even attempts to describe physically:
By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong, she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes. This she did not. There was never lipstick to contrast with her straight black hair, while at the age of thirty-one her dresses showed all the imagination of English blue-stocking adolescents.
"Rosy", as they "called her from a distance", simply could not be dealt with rationally. At one point it even seemed that she was about to attack Watson physically.
It's only at the end that Watson finally realizes the truth:
...we both came to appreciate greatly her personal honesty and generosity, realizing years too late the struggles that the intelligent woman faces to be accepted by a scientific world which often regards women as mere diversions from serious thinking. Rosalind's exemplary courage and integrity were apparent to all when, knowing that she was mortally ill, she did not complain but continued working on a high level until a few weeks before her death.
She died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at the age of thirty-seven, and thus was denied the Nobel Prize that was awarded to her colleagues in 1962, because that prize is never awarded post-humously.
Her story is told in Rosalind Franklin : The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox.
Posted by jt at June 6, 2006 08:06 AM