Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady if DNA
By
Brenda Maddox
Publisher: Harper Perennial
September 30, 2003
416 pages
ISBN-10:0060985089
ISBN-13:978-0060985080
For all her talents, genius, and dedication to science, Rosalind Franklin was nudged out of recognition for her contribution to the greatest discovery of the second half of the Twentieth Century, described in Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA. Author Brenda Maddox offers a detailed and insightful story of the research that led to the identification of the double helix structure of DNA and its self-replicating characteristics that are the basis of reproduction. Maddox lays the groundwork for the amazing and heart-wrenching story of science and deception with a discussion of Rosalind’s early life in a Jewish family and her early determination to be a great scientist.
Her studies in English education, experiences during the war years, and study abroad are the foundation for her scientific research. After a stint in France, Rosalind returned to England with a research position at King’s College London, where some of her most advanced research took place. She had refined the use X-ray refraction to study carbon molecules, a knowledge she applied to the study of DNA. The existence of the DNA molecule had been known to scientists for decades, but its structure and role in reproduction was unknown.
While Rosalind Franklin worked in King’s College London with assistant Raymond Gosling and American scientist Maurice Wilkins, James Watson and Francis Crick labored tirelessly in the Cavendish lab in Cambridge, each team engaged in the laborious work of studying the molecule but in different ways. While Crick and Watson built elaborate models to depict the structure of DNA, Rosalind called it rubbish, arguing that the model structure was not based on data and that elaborate studies of the molecules themselves would yield more useful scientific data. She relied on years of experience with crystallography and X-ray refraction to assess the molecular structure. Crystallography is based on the analysis of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals, a branch of science that was applicable to molecular structure of DNA and other natural compounds. While Rosalind worked tirelessly with the meticulous assessment of data, her peers in the lab noticed that she was careless about protective gear that would shield her from the harmful effects of X-rays.
The work at the Cavendish lab at Cambridge was so demanding and yielded so little that Sir Lawrence Bragg, head of the lab, halted the DNA research, a mistake he would quickly come to regret. At King’s College, Rosalind’s research was moving from the construction of X-Ray refraction apparatus to the production of images and the data they yielded. The images of DNA were beginning to suggest a helical structure.
Pressure was mounting to decipher the DNA molecule and define its self-replicating properties. Linus Pauling, the renowned American scientist, claimed in 1953 to have solved the molecular mystery and intended to publish his finding. He provided the Cavendish group and the King’s College group with a copy delivered by his son, Peter Pauling. Watson and Crick saw glaring flaws in Pauling’s work. Pauling described a triple-stranded helix with phosphates at the center similar to a model Crick had rejected two years earlier. Also the phosphate molecules were not ionized, so the nucleic acid wasn’t an acid at all.
Watson was delighted at finding flaws in the work of the renowned scientist and by the publication of flawed science but concerned that the publication would ramp up the competition to identify the structure of DNA.
Franklin was headstrong and by some accounts tempestuous, characteristics that isolated her from other scientists working on similar issues. The lab at King’s College was becoming increasingly a den of conflict between Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind, with Wilkins’s perspective enduring and Rosalind’s mostly lost to history. Wilkins wrote to Francis Crick in the spring of 1952, “Franklin barks often but doesn’t succeed in biting me. Since I reorganized my time so that I can concentrate on the job, she no longer gets under my skin. I was in a bad way about it all when I last saw you.” (174)
Watson experienced Franklin’s wrath when he visited the King lab unannounced carrying a copy of Linus Pauling’s flawed paper. “Suddenly Rosy came from behind the lab bench that separated us and began moving towards me. Fearing that in her hot anger she might strike me, I grabbed the Pauling manuscript and hastily retreated to the open door.” (194) Author Brenda Maddox suggests Watson’s description was exaggerated. She does note that as Watson retreated, he ran into Maurice Wilkins, who some months later described to him a similar aggression. In any case, Franklin felt uncomfortable in the King’s lab and made it known she was eyeing a move to a lab in Birkbeck College, unaware that her research success had fallen into hands of competing scientists who did not view her favorably.
Watson’s visit to the Kings College lab was the beginning of a scientific quandary. Rosalind’s assistant, Raymond Gosling, showed Maurice Wilkins an image from Rosalind’s X-ray diffraction work known as Photograph 51 that yielded the best images yet of the DNA molecule. Wilkins showed the image to James Watson at Cavendish, who immediately saw its scientific value and began to do mental calculations.
“He was now able to sweep up at a glance the meaning of Rosalind’s photographic image: Unbelievably clear evidence of a helix, with detectable parameters of tilt and spacing. It was with little exaggeration that he wrote in The Double Helix, “The instant I saw the picture my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race.” (196)
On the train back to London, Wilkins grabbed a newspaper and from memory noted in the margins data and sketches he recalled from the meeting with Watson, details that would emerge in his own publication.
Although Rosalind’s research contributed key information in the unraveling of the DNA mystery, recognition of her work was obscured by maneuvering behind her back. Crick and Watson rushed to publish their findings, based partly on Rosalind’s work they had acquired without her consent or knowledge. Thus crediting her research was out of the question.
“They knew they were right to declare their inspired insights. But how to give credit to the King’s experiment that had been the springboards of their imagination? They could hardly refer to Rosalind’s data which had not yet been published. An explicit acknowledgement would publicly reveal the Cavendish’s intrusion into King’s territory, the violation of the gentleman’s agreement, as Watson put it, of not working on the problem of a close friend.” (207)
The science and the deception culminated in the publication in the journal Nature of three scientific articles, one by Wilkins, one by Crick and Watson, and one by Rosalind and Gosling addressing the structure of DNA. Author Maddox writes,
“Did Rosalind suspect that part her work played in the design of the double helix model? In retrospect, Gosling, [biologist Max Ferdinand] Perutz, and Crick believe that she must have known. It was obvious once she looked at it that the dimensions of the molecules fitted her data on the diameter and the repeat number of nucleotides in a turn. Yet she did not complain.” (211) She and Gosling visited Cambridge to view the model.
As the articles were being edited, Wilkins helped remove or tone down references or allusions to Rosalind’s work. Rosalind, meanwhile, adapted her paper to Crick’s and Watkins’s findings, forced to accept a “me-too” posture.
“It had not escaped Watson’s and Crick’s notice either that Rosalind’s work was fundamental to their discovery and that they had not consulted her about its use. While Rosalind seems to have suspected that the data had somehow reached Cambridge, no one at King’s nor at the Cavendish bothered—or, considering her temper dared—to press the matter further. To all concerned she was an awkward member of King’s staff on the way out.” (212)
There was a party a King’s College when the three papers came out in Nature on 25 April 1953, under the under the heading “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids.” Apparently Rosalind was not invited. Now at Birkbeck, her former boss and head of the lab at King’s College not only failed to congratulate her but asked that she cease research on DNA. J.T. Randall wrote her, “You will no doubt remember that when we discussed the question of your leaving my laboratory you agreed that it would be better for you to cease to work on the nucleic acid problem and take up something else.” (212-213)
At Birkbeck some work focused on the DNA structure of tobacco mosaic virus and coal molecules. The Birkbeck lab was a slum compared to King’s College, but she worked freely on her research. Her vacation travels took her to the United States, where she met scientists throughout the country and even included a meeting with James Watson, who half a century later wrote that he agreed with a colleague that that Rosalind had been unfairly treated in her work on DNA. Despite her diligence, she was two steps away from the discovery of the double helix, although the information was nearly in her face. She needed a collaborator to help her focus. Aaron Klug, physicist, chemist and crystallographer, was that collaborator. She showed photographs of the tobacco mosaic virus. Stunned by the clarity and accuracy, he focused on her research. They were an ideal team. Francis Crick also became an ally and contributor.
Rosalind acquired an enemy, Norman W. Pirie, a virologist who had a proprietary interest in plant virology. Rosalind’s X-ray images of tobacco mosaic viruses were superb, the best yet and suggested dimensions that conflicted with Pirie’s model. Pirie was defensive and challenged her research. He may have influenced the Agricultural Research Council that funded her research to limit the grant. The ARC secretary refused some requests for equipment and declined to fund a trip to the United States, eventually funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. In the United States, Rosalind visited labs, attended and presented at conferences, and established working relations and friendships with a host of scientists, many of them women. Her research focus shifted toward proteins and nucleic acid studies, the subject of some conferences.
Rosalind seems to have little interest in men or romance. However, on this trip she met a geneticist from Yale—Don Casper—whom she may have had an interest in. There was mutual admiration and collaboration but ultimately no romance, a void that seemed to define her and confuse some. She loved Jacques Mering, a married researcher in the Paris lab where she worked years earlier, but their relationship was unclear, and Mering destroyed her letters. On her return to England, she experienced some disturbing symptoms and visited a physician. “Are you pregnant,” he asked. “I wish I were,” she answered. When she underwent surgery to explore a large lump in the right pelvic, surgeons from masses on both ovaries. They were cancerous. A second surgery was performed to remove the uterus and a portion of an ovary that remained from the first surgery.
Despite her illness, she worked tirelessly on virus structure including polio virus while collaborating with the field of scientists including Dr. Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine in 1953. She published seven papers in 1953, with another six in the works for 1957 while additional masses developed in her pelvis. Rosalind had complained bitterly about her low salary. As a researcher she was not afforded the salary and security of a faculty member. However, by 1957, she received a salary increase and new position, research associate in biophysics. Despite chemotherapy and surgery, her condition worsened while her optimism persisted. But her condition could no longer be treated. Among the many visitors were her dear friend Jacques Mering from Paris, who wept at seeing her condition. Her attachment to him may have precluded forming other, lasting relationships, and he, the older of the two, should have considered that.
Rosalind’s death in 1958 promoted a litany of praise from scientists for her research on a number of subjects. In an obituary by J.D. Bernal her work from early days to the final days was outlined in detail, the most recent, portraying her work on DNA. “By the most ingenious experimental and mathematical techniques of X-ray analysis, she was able to verify and make more precise the illuminating hypothesis of Crick and Watson on the double spiral structure of this substance. She established definitely that the main sugar phosphate chain of nucleic acid lay on the outside spiral and not on an inner one, as had been authoritatively suggested. (308)
After James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize in 1962, Rosalind’s legacy took a hit from Watson in his book The Double Helix, where she was portrayed as Rosie, the average scientist who hoarded data she did not understand, treated men like naughty boys, and wore shabby clothing. Watson submitted for publication his book to Harvard University, which required written consent from those mentioned in the book. Crick and Wilkerson objected strongly to the content in nine letters including one to the president of Harvard. Other scientists and family objected. The Harvard board declined to publish The Double Helix, which Watson then submitted to Athenaeum Press. It was published in 1968, an instant success. But to many, he was “honest Jim,” a sarcastic phrase he adopted as face value as he spent much of his later years justifying his portrayal of Rosalind and defending his research while downplaying the significance of Rosalind’s. Despite the successful research in coal and virus molecules, Watson, Crick and others continued their snipes about her failure to recognize the double-helix that was revealed in Photograph 51. Forty six years after walking into her laboratory at Kings College, Watson was still trying to justify the historical events that defined the research into DNA. In one admission, however, he noted that his viewing of Photograph 51 was the pivotal moment in the unraveling of the double helix.
The story of Rosalind Franklin is a story that requires no storyteller. The genius, the hard work, the intrigue, the conflict of personalities in competition for scientific discovery resonate with aspiring scientists, with women struggling for an place in men’s world. The loss and pathos of untimely death in midst of brilliant discovery is inherent in the Rosalind Franklin story. The telling by master biographer Brenda Maddox brings the story to life with detailed, factual discussions that elicit rather than verbalize the emotional undercurrent of her life.
So many biographies of Rosalind Franklin are published, it would be impossible to compare and assess each one. Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA is certainly at the top of the list, but if you do not read this one, read one of them. Her story is vast and can be told in many forms. Everyone should be aware.