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Newcastle Science Festival Review


The Life of Science and the Science of Life

Caspar Hewett reviews a discussion held as part of the first Newcastle Science Festival,
International Centre for Life, 17 April 2003.
Chair: Linda Conlon

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This refreshingly different event consisted of three biographers discussing the human side of being a scientist; Brenda Maddox, author of Rosalind Franklin - the dark lady of DNA, Victor McElheny, author of Watson and DNA - Making a Scientific Revolution and Samantha Weinberg, author of Pointing from the Grave: A True Story of Murder and DNA.

Brenda Maddox's book charts the life of the woman whose work took her to the brink of discovering the double helix; Rosalind Franklin. As a biographer Maddox had a number of reasons for choosing Franklin as a subject. One was the growth in the popularity of science books in the last few years, but most important was the fact that Franklin had a difficult life - as a woman, a jew and a scientist - and thus makes an interesting study. For one thing, Franklin's father didn't think she should have a career and very much expected her to settle into the traditional role of wife and mother. As a woman she found her work environment difficult - science at that time was even more male dominated than it is now! In particular the period when she worked at King's College, London was a very unhappy time for her - not because she experienced chauvinism or harassment, but because she didn't get on with Wilkins, had nothing in common with others working around her and thus found herself working in isolation. Maddox pointed to the irony of there being a Franklin and Wilkins Building at King's College now.

James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and one of the most famous scientists alive, provided the subject matter for Victor McElheny's introduction. Watson came from a small family and from an early age was a reader, thinker and something of a 'geek' according to McElheny. However, he developed into a masterful character skillful at energising people. McElheny described Watson as a man who successfully pushes people by annoying them - trying to prove them wrong and challenging them to return the favour. However, he is respectful of those who work for him - his colleagues tend to feel that they work with him rather than for him. McElheny bases this judgement on first-hand experience of having worked with Watson, with whom he feels he shares a mutual respect.

There is, of course, an important link between the protagonists of these first two biographies since Rosalind Franklin's work was of central importance in providing the key to the structure of DNA, which Watson and his colleague Francis Crick unravelled and published in April 1953. Watson saw Franklin's data, providing important insights without which he and Crick would not have successfully completed their work. Asked if he felt that the relationship between Franklin and Watson had damaged Watson's reputation McElheny said he didn't think so - Watson didn't understand Franklin and vice versa, but actually he contributed greatly to her becoming so well known by admitting to the importance of her work in his non-fiction novel The Double Helix (1968). Maddox agreed - Jim Watson said some terrible about Rosie, but also admitted that he and Crick could not have done what they did without having seen her data, which put her on the map.

Later Franklin did some important work on the structure of viruses - work which shows her relentless professionalism. In the last five years of her life she worshipped Francis Crick and they exchanged papers and letters and became good friends.

Samantha Weinberg's book Pointing from the Grave: A True Story of Murder and DNA is not a biography, but a true detective story. It tells the extraordinary story of Helena Greenwood, a young British DNA scientist whose work played a key contribution in solving the mystery of her own murder. In April 1984 Helena was sexually assaulted in her San Francisco cottage. A year later she was brutally murdered hundreds of miles away. The only suspect was the man accused of the original rape. However, there was no physical evidence to link the suspect to the crime and the case was filed "unsolved". Fifteen years later, a detective called Laura Hiley picked up the data and used DNA evidence to find the identity of the murderer.

For Weinberg, although her book hinges on the work of the two women Greenwood and Hiley, the prime character is the murderer. As she worked on the story she found herself fascinated by his experience and by two intriguing aspects of this story and DNA; the way his DNA led to his eventual capture and the question of how big a part his DNA played in his becoming a murderer. She also felt that the thought that he no longer had a future because of his actions inspired compassion despite the crime he had comitted. I have to admit to not having read Pointing from the Grave but the extract Samantha Weinberg read from it was quite gripping and certainly made me want to read it!

DNA is not the only thread joining the three books under discussion here since Helena Greenwood was inspired by Rosalind Franklin to become a scientist. Asked if Greenwood received better treatment than Franklin because of the period in which she worked, Weinberg said she probably did. Greenwood did suffer from chauvinism, especially when she had mem working for her, and she had to fight hard to have her voice heard because she was a woman, but there is no doubt that she worked in a time when it was easier to be a working woman scientist than Franklin's.

On the question of whether the arrival of modern forensics has made it easier or harder to write a detective novel Weinberg said she thinks that you need to be more ingenious in writing now - the murderers need to take more precautions!

In the course of the question and answer session that followed there was some discussion of the pivotal moment when Jim Watson saw Rosie Franklin's data. Even Watson himself has recounted the story in very different ways. Did Watson burst in on Franklin and call her incompetant, as one account goes, or did she find him snooping in her lab notes in her absense? Maddox is sure that Watson's snooping had made him unpopular at King's College, but this does not answer the question. What is clear is that Watson and Franklin had very different approaches to finding scientific truth. Franklin thought that Watson and Crick's model-building was just fooling around and reputedly and begged the question "how are they going to prove it?" It is interesting that the key period when Franklin was tantalisingly close to discovering the struture of DNA was her unhappiest - in fact, she was trying to clean up her work and get out of King's as quickly as possible because she was so unhappy there.

In closing the chair, Linda Conlon, asked the panel to make final comments on why they chose scientists as the subject of their books. Samantha Weinberg thought that one factor was that scientists themselves are often poor at self-promotion (although Jim Watson is a notable exception to this rule) and so writers could take up the cudgels on their behalf. For Victor McElheny there is something essentially human about being a scientist, a view I have a lot of sympathy with. Brenda Maddox, with characteristic humour, said that one of the biggest factors is that scientists write good letters and thus provide good material for biography.

The Life of Science and the Science of Life proved to be a highly enjoyable evening of discussion. All three authors were entertaining and each provided interesting insights into the lives of the people they have written about. The extracts read by the biographers really brought the characters to life. For me, allowing the characters of these people to take centre stage rather than their science provided a pleasant counterbalance to the rest of the week's events.

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Buy these books from Amazon
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (Hardback) Pointing from the Grave Watson and DNA
The Double Helix A Passion for DNA Genes, Girls and Gamow by James D. Watson My Life in Science by Sydney Brenner


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© C J M Hewett, 2003