Rosalind Franklin has always been a tragic and intriguing figure for me. From the first time I heard her name mentioned in one of my Biology courses in college, I wanted to learn more about the woman who was involved with one of science’s most important discoveries. I have finally gotten around to reading Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA and I am definitely glad that I did.

Back Cover Blurb
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 that she was going to be a scientist, but who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century.

The Story of An Incredible Woman
This book begins by describing Franklin’s affluent and close-knit “Anglo-Jewish” family. Rosalind Franklin was not expected to do anything in her life other than go through basic schooling, marry well, and reap the rewards of being part of such a successful family. The “alarmingly clever” girl who practiced mathematics in her spare time grew up to become a confident, proud, and extremely-focused scientist who specialized in x-ray crystallography—a technique that shoots radiation at molecules and then attempts to interpret the shape and structure of molecules by interpreting how the x-rays scatter when they bounce off of the invisible specimens in question.

We follow Rosalind from England to Paris where she did groundbreaking work on the molecular structure of coal. After Paris, she moved to King’s College (Oxford University) to attempt to determine the structure of DNA. While at King’s she was placed into a partnership with an incompatible coworker: Maurice Wilkins. He saw Rosalind as his assistant which ruffled her feathers while Rosalind saw him as competition because she thought she was the only one in the department working on DNA. It was a bad match from the start and one that drove Wilkins “into the arms”, so to speak, of James Watson and Francis Crick. One day Wilkins shared Franklin’s research with Watson and, as soon as Watson saw the picture, the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place for him. He rushed back to Cambridge and Crick. They finished the model of DNA and ultimately earned a place in modern-day science books as the team who made one of science’s greatest discoveries.

By the time that the DNA discovery was published, Franklin was already working on viral structure at another research facility. She was well on her way to becoming an international science star… until her body began to fail her.

My Opinion
I really enjoyed reading Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA. It is the biography of a science legend but is written simply enough for non-science types to follow and understand. The story follows both Franklin’s professional and personal life and includes quite a bit of detail about her frequent adventures abroad in her free time. One incredible feature of the book, for me anyway, is that we hear a lot of the story straight from Rosalind Franklin. She lived in a time when you communicated through letters and she was very conscientious about keeping in touch with her family and friends. When Rosalind wrote a letter to a relative it was read, circulated throughout the family, put into storage, and then returned to her when she got home. Franklin kept all of her letters and her family gave permission for them to be utilized when the author wrote this book.

Rosalind Franklin was a brilliant and formidable woman. Reading this book reinforced my impression of her as an amazing scientist but it also taught me about personal life, her relationships with family and coworkers, her zest for life, and her incredible courage while fighting for her life. Books like these will cement her rightful place in modern history.

This review is Lean-N-Mean. Are you?


Recommended: Yes