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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