Product Description

In March 1953, Maurice Wilkins of King's College, London, announced the departure of his obstructive colleague Rosalind Franklin to rival Cavendish Laboratory scientist Francis Crick. But it was too late. Franklin's unpublished data and crucial photograph of DNA had already been seen by her competitors at the Cambridge University lab. With the aid of these, plus their own knowledge, Watson and Crick discovered the structure of the molecule that genes are composed of -- DNA, the secret of life. Five years later, at the age of thirty-seven, after more brilliant research under J. D. Bernal at Birkbeck College, Rosalind died of ovarian cancer. In 1962, Wilkins, Crick and Watson were awarded the Nobel Prize for their elucidation of DNA's structure. Franklin's part was forgotten until she was caricatured in Watson's book The Double Helix.

In this full and balanced biography, Brenda Maddox has been given unique access to Franklin's personal correspondence and has interviewed all the principal scientists involved, including Crick, Watson and Wilkins.

This is a powerful story, told by one of the finest biographers, of a remarkably single-minded, forthright and tempestuous young woman who, at the age of fifteen, decided she was going to be a scientist, but who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #223970 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Her photographs of DNA were called "among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken," but physical chemist Rosalind Franklin never received due credit for the crucial role these played in the discovery of DNA's structure. In this sympathetic biography, Maddox argues that sexism, egotism and anti-Semitism conspired to marginalize a brilliant and uncompromising young scientist who, though disliked by some colleagues, was a warm and admired friend to many. Franklin was born into a well-to-do Anglo-Jewish family and was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. After beginning her research career in postwar Paris she moved to Kings College, London, where her famous photographs of DNA were made. These were shown without her knowledge to James Watson, who recognized that they indicated the shape of a double helix and rushed to publish the discovery; with colleagues Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he won the Nobel Prize in 1962. Deeply unhappy at Kings, Rosalind left in 1953 for another lab, where she did important research on viruses, including polio. Her career was cut short when she died of ovarian cancer at age 37. Maddox sees her subject as a wronged woman, but this view seems rather extreme. Maddox (D.H. Lawrence) does not fully explore an essential question raised by the Franklin-Watson conflict: whether methodology and intuition play competing or complementary roles in scientific discovery. Drawing on interviews, published records, and a trove of personal letters to and from Rosalind, Maddox takes pains to illuminate her subject as a gifted scientist and a complex woman, but the author does not entirely dispel the darkness that clings to "the Sylvia Plath of molecular biology."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Rosalind Franklin is known to few, yet she conducted crucial research that led to one of the most significant discoveries of the 20th century-the double helical structure of DNA. Because of her unpublished data and photographs, Francis Crick and James Watson were able to make the requisite connections. Until recently, Franklin was remembered only as the "dark lady"-a stereotypically frustrated and frustrating female scientist, as profiled in Watson's 1968 autobiography, The Double Helix. Maddox (whose D.H. Lawrence won the Whitbread Biography Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize) does an excellent job of revisiting Franklin's scientific contributions (to the point of overloading nonscientists) while revealing Franklin's complicated personality. She shows a woman of fiery intellect and fierce independence whom some saw as haughty, though to family and close friends she was warm and devoted. Maddox displays a unique voice in recounting Franklin's story, using letters written to family and friends for much of the text. Her voice subtly draws us in while holding us at arm's length, much like Franklin herself. By the end, the reader is bristling that Franklin should be mostly forgotten, but this biography provides some recompense. Recommended for public libraries with science collections and all academic libraries.
--Marianne Stowell Bracke, Univ. of Arizona Libs., Tucson
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
James Watson's blockbuster The Double Helix (1968) widened recognition of Rosalind Franklin, but he presented her as a stereotyped caricature. She was a would-be beauty except for her dowdy clothes, a volatile termagant to be avoided, except that Watson wanted something she had: X-ray images of DNA. In a much-needed corrective to Watson's portrayal, biographer Maddox elucidates Franklin's vital contribution to the discovery of DNA's structure, elaborates on her scientific achievements in virology, and creates a viable portrait of her reserved but self-confident personality. The latter element is Maddox's best contribution to her portrayal, for Franklin has become a symbol of victimhood for some feminists, an unsought role that does not fit the real Franklin, Maddox suggests. Franklin advanced far in biophysics in her scant 38 years of life, encountering condescending sexism but nothing that deterred her from pursuing a scientific career. This drive was interpreted by some, such as Watson, as a peremptory manner, but other scientists adored her and wept bitterly at her death from ovarian cancer in 1958. A finely crafted biography. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A fine biography of one of the great crystallographers
I was initially drawn to this book (as will most other readers I imagine) by the controversy surrounding Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of the structure of the DNA helix. Instead, I was undeservingly rewarded with a fine biography of a character every bit as complex and fascinating as a heroine in a Henry James novel: a rich, head-strong English Jewish girl, blessed with a burning passion for science, talented but trapped in the chauvinistic world of post-war English science. She spent her life split between the sunny sophistication of France and the sobriety of England. Her professional life occurred through the Second World War, and the post-war period, providing a rich background for the biography.

On the DNA controversy, Brenda Fox gives the most compelling account that I have read of what actually happened: if anything, Franklin was a victim of the fractious atmosphere created by J.T. Randall, head of the department of Biophysics at King's college. By not clarifying the working relations between Wilkins, Franklin and their students, Randall deliberately created an ugly turf war. That Watson and Crick got to see her data was a result of confusion rather than espionage.

Yet, the question is often raised that Franklin was not capable of solving the structure on her own. To answer that question, one only has to follow her later career to find out that she was truly one of the great crystallographers. Her elucidation of the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus was a technical achievement easily rivalling that of DNA, and might have led to a Nobel-prize if not for her early death. Indeed, her junior collaborator on the mosaic virus, Aaron Klug, would go on to win a Nobel prize himself, citing Franklin as his greatest mentor in his Nobel-prize speech (a high honour amongst scientists). Brenda Fox unearths a voluminous amount of material, which shows that Franklin was careful rather than unimaginative, as some have claimed. In a more supportive atmosphere, Franklin would have solved the DNA structure herself. However, Watson and Crick built on so many of Franklin's results (that DNA was helical, that the phosphates are on the outside, that there are 2 forms of DNA) that the real scandal is that they lied in their paper about having come to the model through pure theory alone.

Brenda Fox paints a magnetic portrait of Franklin - a woman who was alternatively gregarious and witty, with a penchant for all things French (a very fine prejudice indeed), yet was also cold, hostile and aristocratically overbearing. Her relations with the men in her life were complex and dissected with sympathetic acumen by Brenda Fox. In short, I came away with the impression that Rosalind Franklin was someone I would have liked to have known. I can think of no greater praise for a biography than that.

p.s. just a little note to a previous reviewer: crystallography in proteins is alive and well: the 2003 Chemistry Nobel-prize went to Rod McKinnon for the crystal structure of the potassium channel, in 1997, it went to John Walker for the structure of ATP-synthase.

Great scientist, good woman cheated of recognition...
Gee, it's amazing how little has changed over the past 50-odd years. They just released a report (National Science Foundation) showing how few women and minorities have places of importance in research and clinical science throughout the U.S. and her universities and corporations. It's a major struggle still to try to be a scientist, whether you are a woman, whether you are slightly older then the normal student, whether you are a racial minority, or an 'ability' minority. I should know: I was three of the above, and many of my professors in med school for Neuroscience (research) made my life miserable to the point of having to leave the program.

Rosalind Franklin accomplished a lot in her short life. She was a magnificent crystallographer: A science which is not used much anymore, but without whom we could not elucidated much in chemistry and biology. Unfortunately, she had many detractors, one of whom is James Watson. Those of us involved and embroiled in bioethics and disability do not have a very high opinion of this man anyway, because of statements made in the last few years involving genetics about 'getting rid of all the ugly women' and 'the lower IQ 10% in society" (there will always be a lower 10% no matter how many people you 'rid' society of until you get to just James Watson!). This book just confirmed that what I thought was the rantings of an old man, were actually the confirmed prejudices of a chauvinistic scientist.

If it had not been for Franklin, Watson and Crick would not have quickly reached their 'eureka' moment in determining the structure of DNA. The work of Franklin which was in for publishing was more or less handed to Watson and Crick, and her photography was seen by Watson without her permission. She walked into her office to find Watson going through her work...it's amazing that this information has not been recognized by now. Ethically, WAtson and Crick made use of her work, without giving her recognition. And since the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously, she was not included in the recognition. Makes you wonder if she had lived, given the obvious prejudice against women still in science, if she would have been recognized. Few women are. In fact, in the last few years, I cannot remember a single woman in science being recognized by the Nobel Committee.

It's time to rectify this injustice. I would hope and suggest that some other group such as Microsoft would provide a grant such as Nobel's that recognizes both minorities and women in science and technology whose work has provided much needed diversity in thought and in science (whether living or dead). The Prize could set up chairs or fund work in the name of Rosalind Franklin and provide the real history behind the discovery of DNA, as well as give her family the retroactive place of pride that they should have in her. Such a prize would also encourage young women and minorities, whether racial or ability or cultural, with the mentors they need to encourage them to go into science. Without diversity, the prejudices of a few become major social programs, especially in genetics. A return to eugenics would be less likely to happen if science is diverse.

Karen L. SAdler,
Science Education,
University of Pittsburgh

Fragile Excellence
Brenda Maddox writes a book that amalgamates her subject's technical performance with her human frailties. She presents Rosalind Franklin as technically gifted and thorough to a degree most mortals would not comprehend, with a personality that is simultaneously beautiful & hostile, fragile & robust, all in the one human being.

What is refreshing is Maddox' honesty in dealing with her subject, and the intense warmth she brings to her. The counterpoint of Rosalind's scientific brilliance on the one hand and her vulnerability on the other makes her an absorbing character. She inspires as being prosaic at one level, artless at another and exceptionally diligent and intelligent.

But in the end Brenda Maddox leaves another message - that Rosalind Franklin despite her strengths and weaknesses, was beautifully human. And this is the refreshing part.