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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
Watson notes that when he published this book in 1968, almost all of the people mentioned in it were still alive and working—including Herman Kalckar, John Kendrew, Max Perutz, Sir Lawrence Bragg, Hugh Huxley, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, and Peter and Linus Pauling. The only exception was Rosalind Franklin, who tragically died of cancer in 1958. Watson admits that his first impressions of Franklin were wrong, and he praises her exemplary scientific work. She eventually developed a friendly collaborative relationship with Francis Crick, and Watson regrets his conflicts with her and his blindness to the difficulties that women face in science. The book ends with a photocopy of Watson’s letter describing the double helix structure to Max Delbrück.
Watson’s epilogue, like his preface, was partially a response to the controversy that arose when he first tried to publish this book. He emphasized that his former colleagues were still alive and working for two main reasons. First, he wanted to emphasize that they had made (and were still making) important scientific contributions of their own. While they were supporting characters in Watson’s story, their own stories were also worth telling. And second, Watson wanted to point out that his colleagues were all available to narrate their own version of events, in the likely case that readers, critics, or fellow scientists took issue with the way he portrayed the past in this book. While Watson recognizes that he was unfair to Rosalind Franklin in his book, his comments stop just short of an apology. Of course, he also chose not to correct his comments. His justification for this was that he wanted to present events as he first experienced them in the past. Still, readers may not agree that this is a sufficient reason to leave in sexist commentary.
Themes
