Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin

Brenda Maddox

Dedication

For John

CONTENTS

Dedication

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

 

Prologue

Part One

   
1 - Once in Royal David's City

   
2 - ‘Alarmingly Clever'

   
3 - Once a Paulina

   
4 - Never Surrender

   
5 - Holes in Coal

   
6 - Woman of the Left Bank

   
7 - Seine v. Strand

Part Two

   
8 - What Is Life?

   
9 - Joining the Circus

   
10 - Such a Funny Lab

   
11 - The Undeclared Race

   
12 - Eureka and Goodbye

   
13 - Escaping Notice

Part Three

   
14 - The Acid Next Door

   
15 - O My America

   
16 - New Friends, New Enemies

   
17 - Postponed Departure

   
18 - Private Health, Public Health

   
19 - Clarity and Perfection

Epilogue: Life After Death

Bibliography

Notes

Index

 

About the Author

Also by Brenda Maddox

Praise for
Rosalind Franklin

Copyright

About the Publisher

ILLUSTRATIONS

Rosalind's great-grandparents. (Records of the Franklin Family)

Rosalind's grandparents. (From
Portrait of Ellis
by Muriel Franklin)

Rosalind's great-uncle, Sir (late Viscount) Herbert Samuel. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

Three sons and a daughter. (From
Portrait of Ellis
by Muriel Franklin)

A smile to come home to: Nannie Ada Griffiths (From
Portrait of
Ellis
by Muriel Franklin)

Norland Place School Golden Jubilee. (Norland Place School)

Rosalind and her new sister, Jenifer. (Jenifer Glynn)

Rosalind as a hockey-playing Paulina. (Valerie Sutton-Mattocks)

Rosalind in Norway with her precious climbing boots. ( Jenifer Glynn)

Ellis A. Franklin. (From
Portrait of Ellis
by Muriel Franklin)

Working scientist: Rosalind with colleagues at the BCURA. (Xavier Duval)

Five shots of Rosalind on the mountain holidays she loved. (All from Margaret Nance Pierce except close-up of head, turbaned, and shoulders by Vittorio Luzzati)

Rosalind with friends in Brittany. (Margaret Nance Pierce)

Bare-legged Rosalind with colleagues in Lyons. (Rachel Glaeser)

Philip H. Emmett, Rosalind and Marcel Matthieu. (Rachel Glaeser)

At the same conference in Lyons: Haisinski, Jacques Mering, Rosalind and Irene Perrin. (Rachel Glaeser)

Outside l'Ecole de Physique et Chimie in Paris. (Alice Oberlin)

Adrienne Weill enjoying a joke with Mering. (Philip Hemily)

 

Vittorio Luzzati's snapshot of Rosalind in the Cabane des Evettes. (Vittorio Luzzati/National Portrait Gallery)

The after-lunch coffee-making ritual at the ‘labo'. (Rachel Glaeser)

Rosalind, following Luzzati, at Uppsala. (American Society for Microbiology Archives, Anne Sayre Collection of Rosalind Franklin Materials)

Professor J.T. Randall. (S. Chomet)

Interdepartmental cricket match, King's College London. (Dr Bruce Fraser)

James Watson at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. (Courtesy of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives)

Maurice Wilkins. (S. Chomet)

Rosalind's lab at Birkbeck. (Dr John Finch)

Rosalind's young team at Birkbeck. (Dr John Finch)

Professor J.D. ‘Sage' Bernal. (Wolfgang Suschitzky/National Portrait Gallery)

Isidore Fankuchen, Dorothy Hodgkin, J.D. Bernal, and Dina Fankuchen. (Courtesy of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms.Eng.c.5715, Folder J.7)

Madrid, 2 April 1956, at an International Union of Crystallography Symposium. (Dr D.L.D. Caspar)

Rosalind's last look at the Matterhorn with Don Caspar and Richard Franklin. (Dr D.L.D. Caspar)

Muriel and Ellis Franklin on their ruby wedding anniversary. (From
Portrait of Ellis
by Muriel Franklin)

Watson, Crick and their DNA model in 1953. (A. Barrington Brown/Science Photo Library)

To the victors: the Nobel prize line-up in Stockholm in 1962. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

Too deep for tears: Rosalind in a pensive mood. (Elliott & Fry/ National Portrait Gallery)

 

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT

 

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Rosalind Franklin apart, the principals in the drama of the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 survived into the twenty- first century. I have been fortunate to have had many discussions with Dr Francis Crick, Dr James Watson, and Professor Maurice Wilkins. All three have been generous with their time, their recollections, opinions and permissions to quote unpublished letters. Among Rosalind's close associates, those who have shown great interest and offers of assistance include Professor D.L.D. Caspar, Dr K.C. Holmes, Professor Raymond Gosling, Sir Aaron Klug and Dr Vittorio Luzzati.

As I went along, I was surprised (and relieved) by the willingness of scientists to discuss their work with someone with a rudimentary scientific vocabulary. Their patience is explained, I think, by the inherent openness of science as well as by a sincere wish to help set a tangled record straight: Dr John Finch, Professor Bruce Fraser, Dr Durward W.J. Cruickshank, Dr William Ginoza, Professor Alan Mackay, Dr Peter Pauling, Dr Margaret Nance Pierce and Professor H.R. Wilson are among those who sent material from their personal archives, as did the historian who did the research for the BBC's 1987 film,
Life Story,
Jane Callander, Dr June Goodfield and Horace Freeland Judson. That so many volunteered to help is owing to the kindness of the editor of
Nature,
Dr Philip Campbell, who published my letter announcing the planned biography. The scope of the response was a small reminder of
Nature's
global reach and influence.

A great privilege accorded me was access to Rosalind's vivid personal letters, written from her childhood until her last weeks of life. I am deeply grateful to Jenifer Franklin Glynn, and also to Colin and Roland Franklin, for allowing liberal quotation from these without asking to authorise or even agree with the resulting book. These quotations allow Rosalind to speak in her own voice at last, and the real person to emerge from the accretion of myth and caricature.

I am also indebted to those who read the manuscript in rough form, Professor Paul Doty, Dr Walter Gratzer, Dr K.C. Holmes, Professor Ian Glynn, Sir John Maddox and Bernard McGinley. I am grateful, as in previous biographies, for the expert eye on photographs of the historian of twentieth-century fashion, Jane Mulvagh. Any errors remaining are unquestionably my own.

Dr Gunther Stent's masterly critical edition of
The Double Helix
was invaluable, with its inclusion of the three DNA papers which appeared in
Nature
on 25 April 1953, as well as the original reviews of Watson's book and subsequent articles stimulated by the controversy that followed publication.

This biography could not have been written without the resources of many libraries and archives. The principal collections of Rosalind Franklin papers outside the family holdings are in the Anne Sayre Archive held by the American Society for Microbiology Archives at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, under the supervision of Jeff Karr, archivist; in the Franklin papers at Churchill College Library, Cambridge, which also holds the J.T. Randall papers, and in Jeremy Norman's Archive of Molecular Biology at Novato, California, whose holdings include the papers of Aaron Klug, Max Perutz and some of Rosalind herself.

Many other libraries and archives contributed documents, information and answers to queries. I would like to express my appreciation to the Bank of England (David Parr), Bexhill Library (Brian Scott), Bexhill Museum (Julian Porter), Bodleian Library, Oxford (the Charles Coulson papers), Central Library, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Cold Spring Harbor Press (Dr John Inglis), East Sussex Record Office, Gordon Research Conferences (Barbara Henshel), IACR-Rothamsted, King's College London (Patricia Methuen), the Medical Research Council (Tom Hudson), the National Portrait Gallery, Newnham College, Cambridge (Anne Thomson), Norland Place School (David Alexander), the Novartis (formerly Ciba) Foundation, the University of Oregon (the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, archivist Chris Petersen), the Public Record Office of the United Kingdom, the Royal Institution (Frank James), The Royal Society, the Science Museum Agricultural, St Paul's Girls' School (Howard Bailes, archivist), University College Hospital and the Working Men's College for Women and Men (Satnam Gill).

For hospitality, encouragement, and often the loan of books and papers, I am grateful to Dr and Mrs Carl Djerassi, Professor Paul and the late Helga Doty, Professor and Mrs Hubert Dreyfus, Mrs Myrtle Franklin Ellenbogen, Mr and Mrs Colin and Charlotte Franklin, Mr and Mrs Roland Franklin, Professor and Mrs Ian Glynn, Dr and Mrs Raymond Gosling, Mrs Pauline Cowan Harrison, Professor Sir Aaron Klug and Lady Klug, Dr Mair Livingstone, Dr Jacques Maire, Dr Joan Mason, Mr and Mrs Jeremy Norman, Maureen Howard and Mark Probst, Ann Satterthwaite, Dr David Sayre, Dr Gunther S. Stent, Professor and Mrs Robert Tracy.

For interviews, conversations, e-mails and helpful comments, I would like to thank: Dr Simon Altmann, Edgar Astaire, Dr Alec Bangham, John Barton, Marianne Weill Baruch, Dr Stanley Bayley, Anthony Bourne, Dr John Bradley, Dr Sydney Brenner, Baroness Brigstocke, Drs Geoffrey and Angela Brown, Sir John Cadogan, C.S. Carlson, Ruth Carr, Dr Erwin Chargaff, Dr Carolyn Cohen, Freda Ticehurst Collier, Dr Francis and Mrs Odile Crick, Professor D.W.J. Cruickshank, Dr Philip D'Arcy Hart, Professor Edward Deeley, Dr Jack Dunitz, Xavier Duval, Dr Lynne Elkin, Dr Gary Felsenfeld, Georgina Ferry, Dr John Finch, Dr Jeni Fordham, Norman Franklin, Dr Mary Fraser, Rachel Glaeser, Dr William Ginoza, Vincent Gray, Professor Dr Drago Grdenie, Istuan Hargittai, Dr Peter Harris, Dr Pauline Cowan Harrison, Dr Louise Heller, Dr Philip Hemily, Dr Peter Hirsch, Professor Eric Hobsbawm, Carol Howard, Barbara Izdebska, Dan Jacobson, Rosalind Franklin Jekowsky, François Xavier Keraly, Jean Kerlogue, Professor G.D.S. King, Dr W.G.P. Lamb, Stan Lenton, Dick Leonard, Sylvia Castle Levinson, Margaret Levy, Barbara Little, Dr Mair Livingstone, Warner E. Love, Jacques Maire, Marie Marcus, Dr Joan Mason, John Mason, Dr Matthew Meselson, Sir John Meurig Thomas, Mr and Mrs Jeremy Norman, Drs A.C.T. and Margaret North, Dr Agnès Oberlin, Dr Peter Pauling, Martyn Peese, the late Dr Max Perutz, Dr Margaret Nance Pierce, W.S. Pierpont, Anne Crawford Piper, Yves Pomeau, Dr and Mrs Alexander Rich, Noel Richley, Ursula Franklin Richley, Lord Samuel, Al Seckel, Dr Albert Siegel, Dr Bob Simmons, Dr Bea A. Singer, Dr Alex Stokes, Valerie Sutton-Mattock, Dr Denise Tchoubar, Dr Irwin Tessman, Dr Wolfie Traub, Peter Trent, David Turnball, Mrs James Watt, Dr Robley Williams, Dr Bryon Wilson, Professor Herbert Wilson, Dr Jan Witkowski, Evi Wolgemuth and Dr Lewis Wolpert.

My thanks must also go to Michael Fishwick at Harper Collins UK and Terry Karten, HarperCollins US, who have enthusiastically supported this project from the beginning; to Kate Johnson, the most scrupulous of editors, and to Helen Ellis and Jane Beirn, for their publicity efforts. For many years I have been fortunate to have, as agents and friends, Caradoc King at A.P. Watt in London, and Ellen Levine of the Ellen Levine Agency in New York.

Once more John, Bronwen and Bruno Maddox have sustained me through a book with patient listening and perceptive comment.