A review by toniclark
Her Hidden Genius by Marie Benedict

4.0

This is the third book I've read by Marie Benedict, who writes historical novels about interesting women. I've enjoyed all of them. This one is about the life of Rosalind Franklin, the British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to discovering the molecular structures of DNA. She did not exactly get the recognition she deserved during her lifetime (that all went to Watson and Crick), nor did she share in the Nobel prize awarded to them, having died at age 37, four years (I think) before the award was made. This book has quite a bit of science in it and may not appeal to some, but I loved it. I've always been interested in Franklin. The rampant sexism in science labs at the time, combined with her early death makes her story a sad one. But she was an incredibly strong woman, devoted to doing good science. My only reservation about the book stems from not knowing how much was literally true as opposed to fictional embellishment. I'll need to read a biography now.