Personal Values vs. Professional Success Theme Analysis

Throughout Photograph 51, scientific research partners Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins have very different relationships to success and professional fulfillment. Rosalind, a Jewish woman, has spent the majority of her career in a male-dominated field knowing that unless her work is perfect, it will likely be dismissed. As a result, she’s motivated by a genuine love of her work and the ways it could benefit humanity—not the accolades she may or may not receive for it. On the other hand, Wilkins and his contemporaries Francis Crick and James Watson are more ambitious and eager to succeed, even if that means compromising their morals to do so. In the “race” to solve the structure of DNA, the scientists’ different priorities clash. And although Rosalind loses out on success and recognition in the end, the play suggests that the way a person conducts themselves and treats others is more important than achieving professional acclaim. 

Rosalind and Don Caspar are primarily concerned with maintaining their personal values and genuine interest in their work—not with glory or admiration. Rosalind, a lifelong nature-lover, takes pleasure in her work because it allows her to explore the beautiful shapes that comprise the smallest parts of life: the proteins and molecules that make up all living creatures. In her research position at King’s College, however, she finds herself in a cutthroat work environment where her colleagues are always trying to get ahead. Rosalind, as a Jewish woman, knows that sexism and antisemitism will derail any path to personal glory she pursues—and so she chooses to focus on the work in front of her rather than any success that work could potentially bring. She finds a likeminded counterpart in Don Caspar, an American graduate student who begins writing to her to request research materials that will further his doctoral thesis. (Rosalind is “the world’s expert” on the chemical makeup of coal molecules, the subject of Caspar’s project.) Though Rosalind is standoffish at first—since she’s aware that the men in her field often have ulterior motives for collaborating with others—she soon sees that Caspar, like her, is genuinely invested in the beauty of his research. Though Rosalind and Caspar don’t end up receiving the glory that their more bullish colleagues do, they have a genuine respect for each other’s careful, “groundbreaking” work—and for each other’s passion for that work, “even before [it] mean[s] something.” And this personal fulfillment, the play implies, is more meaningful than any professional accolade.

Wilkins, Crick, and Watson, on the other hand, prioritize professional success above all else—an approach that Wilkins lives to regret. Though Wilkins at first asserts that “there is no race” to find the structure of DNA, he nonetheless finds himself swept up in Crick and Watson’s breakneck attempts to win the “race.” Wilkins grows frustrated by Rosalind and Caspar’s careful approach to their work. And while he doesn’t approve of the slipshod models of DNA that Crick and Watson turn out in hopes of merely reaching the finish line first, he finds himself yearning for recognition. At lectures and conferences, he presents the work he and Rosalind are doing together as his work alone, leading Rosalind to accuse him of “self-aggrandizement at the cost of […] integrity.” This offends Wilkins even more, pushing him closer to Watson and Crick—and he unintentionally shares valuable research of his and Rosalind’s with the pair, which allows them to hastily build an accurate model of DNA’s structure. They, along with Wilkins, win the Nobel Prize for the discovery, essentially cutting Rosalind out for the sake of a prestigious award. Wilkins, however, ends the play feeling remorseful about excluding Rosalind, and he’s unable to see the larger picture she does: that “the world won.” In other words, just because Rosalind didn’t receive due credit for her work, her and Wilkins’s DNA research will nevertheless lead to new developments in medical and genetic research and thereby benefit humanity. But in the end, Wilkins doesn’t get to enjoy the fact that his name ended up on the Nobel beside Crick’s and Watson’s. Unlike Rosalind, he compromised his values and betrayed his research partner—and as a result, he’s “spent [his] whole life in regret.”

At the end of Photograph 51, Rosalind suggests that because the answer to the “secret of life” found its way into the world, her and Wilkins’s work was successful—even though they weren’t the ones to share that secret with the world first. It doesn’t matter to Rosalind that she won’t get the glory of the Nobel Prize; for her, “the work never ends.” That the play ends on this note suggests that Rosalind’s work wasn’t in vain—and that personal values like work ethic, professional integrity, and serving the common good are more important than professional success or glory.