Theses had been passed to them without her knowledge, and it was the clarity of these that gave them the insight to solve the mystery of the construction of DNA.

She was a feisty character, and in her tragically short career she made as many friends as enemies.Ĭrick and Watson are the guys credited with discovering the layout of DNA, but they could not have done it without sight of some of her magnificent X-ray photographs of DNA. Read moreįranklin was a renowned scientist in her own right, she established her reputation in X-ray photography starting with coal and moving onto viruses and DNA. The primary difference between this book and The Double Helix is that Watson's little book is still clinging to a narrative in which great scientific breakthroughs are made by one or two people thinking in a room, whereas this book makes a solid case that modern science is group work. Surprisingly, at the end of the book I was less irritated on Franklin's behalf, and more just irritated (in a tired way) with Watson's immature self-aggrandizement, and disillusioned with the whole Nobel process. Still, she forged a way for herself, and authored an amazing number of peer-reviewed publications on some of the most pressing scientific problems of the day. She was smart, opinionated, and driven - qualities the world of science (as well as the world in general) was badly prepared to appreciate in a woman. I am sure it was helpful in establishing a complete portrait of Rosalind, but it was a bit of a chore to slog through.īut once Rosalind was on the scene, it was hard not to adore (and later sympathize with) her.

It starts slow, with an extensive exploration of Franklin's family - parents, grandparents, uncles, their status, etc. Thoroughly researched, this seems as an authoritative account of Franklin's life as one is likely to get. Yet before reading this book, I knew only the barest facts about her: that she was gifted at x-ray crystallography, that Watson & Crick's DNA model would have been impossible (or really, terribly inaccurate) without her, and that her results were used by them in a questionable and poorly acknowledged manner. When asked to name women in science, Rosalind Franklin is always high on my list.

Rosalind franklin the dark lady of dna