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Chapter 18
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
A few weeks later, Watson attended the International Biochemistry Congress in Paris. He briefly passed Erwin Chargaff, then went to meet Max Delbrück, who had offered him a job at Caltech (but helped him get another year’s fellowship at Cambridge instead). However, Delbrück wasn’t particularly impressed by Watson’s TMV research or the DNA models he put together with Crick. Linus Pauling also got his passport back and went to the conference. While his talk was packed full of spectators, he really just summarized his existing research.
The International Biochemistry Conference again shows that even when scientists do their own individual research, science is always a cumulative, collaborative process. The Conference allowed the whole international community of biochemistry researchers to assemble, understand the state of their field as a whole, learn about new ideas, and improve their existing ones. Meanwhile, senior scientists continued to question the value of Watson’s work, showing him how far he still had to go in order to be taken seriously as a researcher.
Themes
After the conference, Watson followed other phage researchers to Royaumont Abbey near Paris, where they were assembling for a week. He also invited Maurice Wilkins, who didn’t enjoy the conference and was on his way to go teach in Brazil. But Wilkins got sick and left after one night. At Royaumont, Watson managed to chat with Linus Pauling, but only about his virus research and his plans to go to Caltech. He had a longer conversation with Linus’s wife, Ava Helen, who explained that her son Peter was going to do his PhD with John Kendrew at Cambridge. Watson comments that Peter wasn’t as interesting as his attractive sister, Linda. The phage researchers’ meeting ended with an extravagant party at a baroness’s country mansion.
The stay at Royaumont Abbey and party with the baroness are clear examples of the great privileges that academic life gave Watson. Of course, to Watson, meeting Linus Pauling was the greatest privilege of all. But in addition to being one of the most famous scientists in the world, Linus Pauling was also the Cavendish Lab’s most important competitor in DNA research besides Maurice Wilkins. Moreover, the personal connection between Linus Pauling, Peter Pauling, and John Kendrew is a reminder that the scientific community isn’t an abstract idea: rather, it’s a network of real people who know, work with, write to, and sometimes even love one another. And in some cases—like Peter Pauling going to study with his father’s rivals in Cambridge—this mix of personal and professional can create complicated conflicts of interest.
Themes
