Rating: 
Summary: A fine biography of one of the great crystallographers
Review: I was initially drawn to this book (as will most other readers I imagine) by the controversy surrounding Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of the structure of the DNA helix. Instead, I was undeservingly rewarded with a fine biography of a character every bit as complex and fascinating as a heroine in a Henry James novel: a rich, head-strong English Jewish girl, blessed with a burning passion for science, talented but trapped in the chauvinistic world of post-war English science. She spent her life split between the sunny sophistication of France and the sobriety of England. Her professional life occurred through the Second World War, and the post-war period, providing a rich background for the biography.On the DNA controversy, Brenda Fox gives the most compelling account that I have read of what actually happened: if anything, Franklin was a victim of the fractious atmosphere created by J.T. Randall, head of the department of Biophysics at King's college. By not clarifying the working relations between Wilkins, Franklin and their students, Randall deliberately created an ugly turf war. That Watson and Crick got to see her data was a result of confusion rather than espionage. Yet, the question is often raised that Franklin was not capable of solving the structure on her own. To answer that question, one only has to follow her later career to find out that she was truly one of the great crystallographers. Her elucidation of the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus was a technical achievement easily rivalling that of DNA, and might have led to a Nobel-prize if not for her early death. Indeed, her junior collaborator on the mosaic virus, Aaron Klug, would go on to win a Nobel prize himself, citing Franklin as his greatest mentor in his Nobel-prize speech (a high honour amongst scientists). Brenda Fox unearths a voluminous amount of material, which shows that Franklin was careful rather than unimaginative, as some have claimed. In a more supportive atmosphere, Franklin would have solved the DNA structure herself. However, Watson and Crick built on so many of Franklin's results (that DNA was helical, that the phosphates are on the outside, that there are 2 forms of DNA) that the real scandal is that they lied in their paper about having come to the model through pure theory alone. Brenda Fox paints a magnetic portrait of Franklin - a woman who was alternatively gregarious and witty, with a penchant for all things French (a very fine prejudice indeed), yet was also cold, hostile and aristocratically overbearing. Her relations with the men in her life were complex and dissected with sympathetic acumen by Brenda Fox. In short, I came away with the impression that Rosalind Franklin was someone I would have liked to have known. I can think of no greater praise for a biography than that. p.s. just a little note to a previous reviewer: crystallography in proteins is alive and well: the 2003 Chemistry Nobel-prize went to Rod McKinnon for the crystal structure of the potassium channel, in 1997, it went to John Walker for the structure of ATP-synthase.
Rating:
Summary: Fine biography of both life and times
Review: This is a fine biography that both covers Franklin's life very well and provides a solid sketch of the world she lived in, without going into the endless detail that some "life and times" biographies do. The book provides a clear understanding of who Franklin was and how she acted, both good and bad. She was a brilliant scientist and a warm, caring friend to many; on the other side she was a perfectionist (it goes with the brilliance) and an intellectual snob. It's the task of biography to show us the whole person, and this book does that. The book also provides a fascinating description of the world of postwar science in Britain. It was still the era of "small science" in which brilliant individuals made major discoveries while working in cramped, dirty conditions with minimal facilities and what now seem absurdly small budgets. Individual scientists still designed their own equipment (one of Franklin's early contributions was the design of an improved X-ray camera) and still spent endless days on pencil-and-paper mathematical computations unless they were lucky enough to get permission from the budget gods to hire a "computer" human to do the arithmetic for them. By covering Franklin's career in detail, Maddox makes clear that her work on DNA was only part of her career, and probably not the most important part. When she died the arc of her career was still climbing. Had Franklin lived she would have been a likely candidate for a Nobel Prize based not on her role in DNA but on research done later by her own team of researchers under her own direction. Her death at age 37 cutting her career short was a loss to all human society.
Rating: 
Summary: A Very Human Portrayal
Review: This is a well-researched book of respectable volume divided into three parts. The first one gives a lengthy history of Rosalind, her family, and other generalities (including her love for everything French and a penchant for hiking). The second delves into Franklin's connection to DNA, and the third part focuses on her work after she left the Kings lab to pursue other projects (in viruses especially).
Like many other people, I first learnt about Rosalind in Watson's book, "The Double Helix", in which she was horribly caricatured. I chose to read the book because I wanted to know more about this "dark lady" - and I am happy to say that my thirst was quenched. The author uses a wealth of first-hand material, including Rosalind's many letters to various people. Although Franklin is said to have had a sharp and impatient tongue, the book demonstrates that she was also a good friend and a diligent scientist. She was a hard worker in spite of all the hardships of being a woman (and Jewish) in an arena that was mostly male.
I really think that the book does justice to Rosalind in highlighting how her work was undervalued and unappreciated. The book summarizes it all when it states that "she had provided all the essential data for those who took the two brilliant leaps of intuition". I would definitely recommend this book if you want to know more about Rosalind Franklin and her connection to DNA.
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