A review by socraticgadfly
The Secret of Life: Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick, and the Discovery of DNA's Double Helix by Howard Markel

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Long review with details, but still not "spoilers":

Behind the science of the search for the double helix is scientific politics. And, behind that is scientific personalities.

 

A lot of people think they know “the story.” The trio who won the Nobel, at the time of their 1953 announcement, squeezed Rosalind Franklin out because the was a woman. And, perhaps because she was a Jewish woman, to boot.

 

Not so fast, says Howard Markel.

 

First, the famous “photo 51” wasn’t shot by her alone, but with the help of one of her associates, Raymond Gosling.

 

Second, as shown above all by her interactions with Dorothy Hodgkin, Franklin new little organic chemistry, and apparently simply let Hodgkin’s constructive criticism about her misinterpretation of what she was X-raying go in one ear and out the other. Hodgkin had herself done X-ray work on the structure of penicillin, for which, along with other things, like the structure of B12, she got her own Nobel in 1964. Franklin not listening more to her, let alone asking questions, seems like a major failure.

 

Franklin also, Markel notes, simply didn’t have the mindset to jump from the deductive work she had done to that point to the induction of model building and eventually to do what Crick and Watson did — abductive ping-ponging.

 

Third, there were prickly personalities more than enough to go around.

 

Markel notes that, yes, there was institutional sexism in British academic science at the time. (There was some in America, too.) There was also racism/ethnicism versus Jews. No doubt about that. But, he also notes that on relatively good treatment of women, King’s was about the best there was in the UK.

 

Plus, back to Hodgkin. Markel notes that she, without totally hiding herself, learned how to play scientific politics as a woman much better than Franklin had up to that point or afterward.

 

As for the other trio?

 

Wilkins I see, from this book, as perhaps mildly to moderately misogynist, along with his relationship struggles with women in general. Did he also have unrequited love feelings for Franklin that led him to cut her deeply? Possible, but we’ll never know.

 

If Jim Watson was half as much a sexist then, or later, as he was a racist throughout life, that obviously explains why he cut Franklin so much.

 

Crick comes off as the least bad of the three.

 

Going beyond a review of the book, were there alternatives on the 1962 Nobel? Let’s not that prize committees had not yet formally barred awards to the deceased but it was practically verboten, so even if Watson and Wilkins, especially, had not cut Franklin, she still couldn’t have won.

 

Other options? Award Crick and Watson only is one. But, Wiki’s page on Wilkins notes his continued refinement of their work after 1953. Both of them as flighty ideas men needed this. 

 

That said, Markel covers THAT, too. He got a rarely granted look at the Nobel archives. At times before 1962, the pair were nominated without Wilkins — and some of their nominations were for Chemistry, not Physiology or Medicine. He also notes that one of the committee members in the 1962 vote mentions Frankin’s work and that’s it.

 

And, had Frankin lived, and perhaps learned more, and learned to unleash her thought more, maybe she could have joined Hodgkin on the 1964 Nobel stand.

 

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As for the one outside challenger? Linus Pauling might not have plumped for a triple helix had his passport renewal not been banned by the quasi-Nazi who ran the US passport office for nearly 20 years. He was set to speak at a major event in the UK in 1951 and would have seen at least something of the work of Franklin and Wilkins had he visited King’s. Wilkins himself admits there’s no way they could have denied him everything.

 

If so? He could have been a double Laureate in one year, or triple, with two new ones: taking the Physiology in 1962 instead of the trio above, with the Peace prize he actually got then.

 

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I have only skimmed the surface of a fascinating, complex, deep book.