Well, shit. ( )

I really thought I was going to dislike this book at first. I'm definitely in Team Franklin, as a woman in STEM and an experimentalist, I know how hard it is to be in the STEM fields today, in the 21st century... so I can only imagine how difficult it was in the mid-20th. The fact that so much ink is spilled about a woman who was "difficult" and didn't like working closely with others -- how much would we even think twice about those characteristics if she had been a man?

Rosalind Franklin was probably worried about being scooped by male coworkers. How many times have women scientists throughout history had their work coopted and published by their male colleagues or superiors? She also had to be damned sure the conclusions she made about her experimental data was unimpeachable and totally beyond reproach. Any errors in her work would have cast doubt on her entire career and gender. So complaining that she was "unable" to make inductive leaps as the male scientists of the day did... cut her some slack. Understand the world she lived in.

Anyway, this book was actually a really nuanced look into the entire saga of the discovery of the form of DNA, and it didn't pull any punches on any side. The author makes clear the contributions from all parties: from Rosalind Franklin's experimental work, to Watson & Crick's inductive leaps and creativity, to the poor forgotten cubicle-mate whose name I can't even remember who contributed the form of the A-C-T-G molecules, to many other scientists including Pauling, Wilkins, Bragg, and more.

Even though I know how the story goes, I found myself eager to keep reading. I got fully captured by the narrative and found myself cheering when the discovery was made and the model built. The book is just really well-written and interesting.

What I could have lived without was the sprinkling of ableist and body-shaming language thrown in here and there throughout the book. He uses the adjective left-handed at least twice, and not to mean that a person's dominant hand was their left. He used it to mean sneaky or dubious or insincere. To which I say: if you want to say somebody was insincere, use the word insincere!

A couple other things. This book was totally complete by itself, but I was glad I had already read a book about Rosalind Franklin, because there was a decent amount of biographical data in here, but not an exhaustive amount. I would suggest Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA. I also wish there had been maybe just a little bit more of the post-DNA story of Watson and Crick. The author does discuss Watson's disgusting racism a little bit, but I would be interested in knowing: what do you with the rest of your life after becoming famous for such a profound discovery at such a young age? The author hints that the rest of Watson and Crick's lives were not as impactful, but doesn't follow up.

Anyway, definitely a recommended book if you're into science, biology, the mother of all underdog stories, or just a compelling narrative about something that all of us are made of. ( )

This is a thorough, well-rounded account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. It gives fuller credit to Rosalind Franklin for her contributions to the field and debunks some of the myths perpetuated in Watson’s account. It demonstrates clearly that Franklin was robbed, and that Wilkins, Watson, and Crick behaved unethically by sharing Franklin’s work behind her back (Wilkins) and failing to give her any sort of credit or opportunity to collaborate (Watson and Crick). Take this book as the definitive account of how the double helix was discovered. ( )

In spring of 1968 I was sitting in my high school biology class listening to Mr. Gasiorowski explain the miracle of life. He was excited, transported, his face illuminated. He reverentially talked about James Watson and the discovery of the double helix. Sometime afterward, I found Watson’s book The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA on the shelf of the drug store I passed on my walk home from school and spent my meagre allowance to buy it.

My teacher knew that the discovery marked a watershed moment. But Watson’s book was part mythos and novelized for effect.

James Watson and Francis Crick were young and brilliant, two people in a race to discover the structure of the building blocks of what makes us what we are. Also in the race was “the world’s greatest living chemist,” Linus Pauling of the California Institute of Technology. Maurice Wilkens and Rosalind Franklin were at King’s College working “the old-fashioned, scientific way–with the slow work and steady accretion of data.” Pauling and Watson/Crick were on the wrong track; Pauling’s idea had a glaring flaw, and they were looking for a triple helix.

James Watson, left, and Francis Crick, right, with the model of DNA
Watson solved the dilemma only after he saw a xray of DNA taken by Franklin, shared without her knowledge. And he never properly accredited her work as contributing to his discovery. Now, Howard Markel writes, it is time to tell how it really happened.

Franklin’s x-ray of DNA that inspired Watson
The Secret of Life is filled with big personalities, flawed and eccentric. Inevitably, these scientists clashed over theory and they clashed personally.

Rosalind Franklin was brilliant, dedicated to her work, committed to scientific facts, and “devastatingly blunt”. She worked in X-ray crystallography of DNA. As a Jewish female scientist she had everything stacked against her. She grated on Maurice Wilkins, “a bag of neuroses” who may have been in love with her and angry that she kept her distance.

Rosalind Franklin at work
Watson was impatient and clumsy; he didn’t do experiments but envisioned things in his head and then built a model. Crick was the mathematician with a “dazzling” grasp of biophysics. The two hit it off right away.

Wilkens and Franklin were doing the bedrock of scientific research.

Also in the race was the eccentric Pauling, who had helped create the Atom bomb and now wanted to contribute something monumentally positive to science.

Watson and Crick’s structure explains everything.

Linus Pauling quoted in The Secret of Life
Markel follows the scientific advancement of understanding DNA, first with the history. Then, he follows the rivals in their research and their personal lives, showing all the steps in their understanding along the way. Watson and Crick won the acclaim for discovering the structure of DNA, forgetting to mention the x-ray that gave Watson the insight he needed.

Franklin’s early death from cancer was likely caused from the radiation she was exposed to in her work. Before her death, she became close to Crick and she and Watson forgot their differences.

Watson invited Wilkens to share in the prize, but not Franklin. “You don’t usually win the Nobel Prize for data you can’t interpret,” Watkins said to the author. But he also admitted his actions were not “exactly honorable.”

Markel’s book is at once high drama and an explanation of the science that lead up to Watson’s ah-ha moment. I grasped the idea of the chemistry without understanding chemistry (chemistry was not one of my finer achievements in high school). It was a challenging read for me, but my interest was caught by the wonderful portraits of these personalities.

I received a galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. ( )