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Chapter 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Double Helix, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Research, Adventure, and the Thrill of Discovery
Scientific Collaboration, Competition, and Community
DNA and the Secret of Life
Academic Life and the University
Summary
Analysis
In November, Watson attended Rosalind Franklin’s talk about her crystallography results. He disliked her dry speaking style and wished that she did her hair differently. Whereas Linus Pauling discovered the alpha helix with molecular models, Franklin strongly believed that crystallography was the only way to discover the structure of DNA. But she believed that scientists needed much more data before they could figure it out. The audience said little and asked few questions. Watson speculates that they wanted to avoid Franklin’s “sharp retort[s].”
Watson’s again evaluates Franklin primarily by her appearance and attitude, and not the quality of her research. Needless to say, his perspective on her is far from objective. Still, if Franklin really believed that only crystallography could solve the structure of DNA, then she was clearly underestimating the significance of Pauling’s work. This shows that when scientists refuse to take one another’s work seriously—whether out of spite, ignorance, or pride—they often miss out on the greatest truths and discoveries. In other words, science is most effective when researchers collaborate and least effective when they insist on working alone.
Themes
At dinner that evening, Maurice Wilkins was delighted about how little progress Rosalind Franklin had made. Watson notes that Wilkins was no longer the aloof, indifferent scientist he first met in Naples. Actually, Wilkins appreciated Watson’s encouragement because he was “a phage person.” Unlike most physicists, biochemists, biologists, and other geneticists, Watson understood the importance of DNA.
Wilkins’s attitude toward Franklin—like the audience’s response to her during her presentation—suggests that Watson wasn’t the only person who strongly disliked her. This underlines how difficult it must have been for Franklin to succeed in such a male-dominated profession in the 1950s. Meanwhile, Wilkins finally noticed that Watson took DNA as seriously as he did and approached it from a similar angle. Physicists knew nothing about biology, biochemists and biologists knew nothing about genetics, and geneticists weren’t interested in studying molecules. But the “phage people,” like Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria, clearly saw the link between DNA and genetics based on experimental evidence.
Themes
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