Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA [Paperback]

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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 Because of her unpublished data and photographs, Francis Crick and James Watson were able to make the requisite connections.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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

“Maddox does justice to her subject as only the best biographers can.” (Los Angeles Times Book Review )

“Lively, absorbing and even handed … What emerges is the complex portrait of a passionate, flawed, courageous women.” (Washington Post Book World )

“Brenda Maddox has done a great service to science and history.” (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review )

“Thoughtful and engaging.” (Chicago Tribune )

“A sensitive, sympathetic look at a women whose life was greater than the sum if its parts.” (New York Times Book Review )

“An excellent biography … Maddox’s account of Franklin’s last years and premature death is moving and poignant.” (Women's Review of Books )

“In this sympathetic biography, Maddox …illuminates her subject as a gifted scientist and a complex woman.” (Publishers Weekly )

“Able, balanced and well researched.” (Science )

“Maddox does an excellent job of revisiting Franklin’s scientific contributions while revealing her complicated personality.” (Library Journal )

“A finely crafted biography.” (Booklist )

“A gripping yet nuanced account … a magnificent biography.” (The Independent )

“A joy to read.” (Sunday Telegraph )

“A meticulous biography…[Rosalind Franklin] was the unacknowledged heroine of DNA, the Sylvia Plath of molecular biology.” (The Economist )

“A vivid three-dimensional portrait of a sciencetist and human being … a moving biography.” (Daily Telegraph (London) )

In 1962, Maurice Wilkins, Francis Crick, and James Watson received the Nobel Prize, but it was Rosalind Franklin's data and photographs of DNA that led to their discovery.

Brenda Maddox tells a powerful story 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.

Brenda Maddox is an award-winning biographer whose work has been translated into ten languages. Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography, the Silver PEN Award, and the French Prix du Mailleur Livre Etranger. Her life of D. H. Lawrence won the Whitbread Biography Award in 1974, and Yeats's Ghosts, on the married life of W. B. Yeats, was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 1998. She has been Home Affairs Editor for the Economist, has served as chairman of the Association of British Science Writers and is a member of the Royal Society's Science and Society Committee. She lives in London and Mid-Wales.