Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (Hardcover)

Brenda Maddox's Rosalind Franklin: the Dark Lady of DNA is the "untold" story of the scientist whose work was paramount in the discovery of the double helix. In 1953 scientist Francis Crick famously burst through the doors of a Cambridge pub to announce that he and his colleague James Watson had discovered the secret of life. He and Watson really had discovered something extraordinary--the structure of DNA. Nine years later the two of them, together with Maurice Wilkins, won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. The ghost at the Nobel feast in 1962 was Rosalind Franklin, who had died of ovarian cancer at the age of 37 four years earlier. Franklin was an exceptionally gifted scientist whose work had been central to the unravelling of the problem of the structure of DNA. Without it the insights of Crick and Watson would not have been possible.

In recent years Rosalind Franklin has become a kind of feminist icon, "the Sylvia Plath of science", as one commentator has called her. The manifest unfairness of her exclusion from the glory attached to what may be the most important scientific discovery of the second half of the 20th century was underlined by the bitchy and misogynist portrait of her in Watson's bestselling book The Double Helix. Brenda Maddox, in her biography, attempts to present a balanced portrait of Franklin and of the assorted giant male egos with whom she came into contact. She acknowledges that Franklin was a spiky personality who not only did not suffer fools gladly but did not suffer them at all. She also emphasises her capacity for friendship, her tangled relationships with her multi-talented and demanding family, her joy in travel and the range of the scientific work she accomplished in her short life. After this biography it will no longer be possible to confine Rosalind Franklin's complex personality within either the straitjackets of Watson's condescension or feminist idolatry. --Nick Rennison

Why 'the Dark Lady'? It was in these terms that Rosalind Franklin was described in 1953 by a fellow scientist at King's College London, Maurice Wilkins. He and Rosalind had brought out the worst in each other and, like several others at King's, Wilkins was delighted when she moved to do her research at Birkbeck College. She was maligned even more in James Watson's book, The Double Helix, in which he gave his famous and exciting account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. There he caricatured Franklin as a dowdy, selfish, bad-tempered woman who would not share the scientific findings she did not herself understand. In this lucidly written and fascinating biography Brenda Maddox sets the record straight and pays tribute to a distinguished scientist who, in spite of the difficulties placed in her way by a frequently misogynistic working environment, made an immensely important contribution to the work on the molecular structure of genes, the secret of life. Reading letters written to and by Rosalind from childhood until her death from ovarian cancer when she was in her early 30s and speaking to the scientists with whom she worked, including Crick, Watson and Wilkins, Maddox has been able to paint the portrait of a dedicated, hard-working and courageous woman who had made a name for herself and published many papers long before she came to King's. She was loyal to her Jewish family and never afraid to speak her mind. Not one to suffer fools gladly, she could be brusque but she could and did inspire love and loyalty and was mourned not only by friends and family but also by colleagues in Paris and London. It is rare to find writing as clear as this; complicated scientific experiments and problems are carefully explained so that both the scientist and the non-scientist can understand and enjoy this book. Watson and Crick of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, along with Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel prize. Years later, Rosalind Franklin's part in the discoveries was acknowledged; there is even a building at King's College London named after her and Wilkins. The tragedy of this story is imagining what more she might have achieved had she lived. (Kirkus UK)

This engagingly direct biography of Franklin encapsulates her vital contributions to science and in particular the deciphering of DNA while providing a durable portrait of a forceful personality. Maddox (D.H. Lawrence, 1994, etc.) doesn't take the combative, defensive tack that previous works in Franklin's defense have affected. She believes Franklin's work speaks for itself, and it does, though often through the dark matter of physical chemistry, which Maddox presents with as admirably accessible a touch as possible for the lay audience. Of course, the crux of the story revolves around her contribution to the understanding of the structure of DNA: her x-ray photograph was very much a part of the a-ha! that prompted Watson and Crick's double-helix formulation, even if she was not given credit at the time, but then neither were others who provided crucial insights, from Oswald Avery to Jerry Donohue. Just as interested as Maddox is in the professional work of Franklin-who also gained renown for her work on the chemistry of coal and on the tobacco mosaic virus-she is fascinated by Franklin's character, which could be prickly, reserved, suspicious, highly territorial, and abrupt. Franklin was a Jewish woman scientist from a well-to-do family, a highly suspect creature when it came to the English academic establishment, which was hardly a supportive environment for her. She was unafraid of speaking her mind yet lacking confidence and wary of her intuitions, fought tooth and nail for funding, was solitary, confrontational when cornered, a social innocent who had made science the core of her emotional life. She did have a personal life, well detailed by Maddox, with friends and travels. Importantly, she received considerable recognition for her work; Maddox regards the notion that she was crushed by the DNA ballyhoo as ridiculous. Franklin went on to do her best work thereafter, never accepting a role as "the Sylvia Plath of molecular biology." At once a scientific exploration and a personal history, Maddox's biography is inviting and ultimately satisfying. (16 pages b&w photos) (Kirkus Reviews)