Awards

• Short-listed for Marsh Biography Award 2003
• Short-listed for Whitbread Book Awards: Biography Category 2002
• Short-listed for Whitbread Prize (Biography) 2002
• Shortlisted for Marsh Biography Award 2003.
• Shortlisted for Whitbread Book Awards: Biography Category 2002.
• Shortlisted for Whitbread Prize (Biography) 2002.

Overview

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9780006552116

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Reviews

Brenda Maddox has done a great service to science and history. --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

This engagingly direct biography of Franklin encapsulates her vital contributions to science and in particular the deciphering of DNA while providing a durable portrait of a forceful personality. Maddox (D.H. Lawrence, 1994, etc.) doesn't take the combative, defensive tack that previous works in Franklin's defense have affected. She believes Franklin's work speaks for itself, and it does, though often through the dark matter of physical chemistry, which Maddox presents with as admirably accessible a touch as possible for the lay audience. Of course, the crux of the story revolves around her contribution to the understanding of the structure of DNA: her x-ray photograph was very much a part of the a-ha! that prompted Watson and Crick's double-helix formulation, even if she was not given credit at the time, but then neither were others who provided crucial insights, from Oswald Avery to Jerry Donohue. Just as interested as Maddox is in the professional work of Franklin-who also gained renown for her work on the chemistry of coal and on the tobacco mosaic virus-she is fascinated by Franklin's character, which could be prickly, reserved, suspicious, highly territorial, and abrupt. Franklin was a Jewish woman scientist from a well-to-do family, a highly suspect creature when it came to the English academic establishment, which was hardly a supportive environment for her. She was unafraid of speaking her mind yet lacking confidence and wary of her intuitions, fought tooth and nail for funding, was solitary, confrontational when cornered, a social innocent who had made science the core of her emotional life. She did have a personal life, well detailed by Maddox, with friends and travels. Importantly, she received considerable recognition for her work; Maddox regards the notion that she was crushed by the DNA ballyhoo as ridiculous. Franklin went on to do her best work thereafter, never accepting a role as the Sylvia Plath of molecular biology. At once a scientific exploration and a personal history, Maddox's biography is inviting and ultimately satisfying. (16 pages b&w photos) (Kirkus Reviews)

Why 'the Dark Lady'? It was in these terms that Rosalind Franklin was described in 1953 by a fellow scientist at King's College London, Maurice Wilkins. He and Rosalind had brought out the worst in each other and, like several others at King's, Wilkins was delighted when she moved to do her research at Birkbeck College. She was maligned even more in James Watson's book, The Double Helix, in which he gave his famous and exciting account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. There he caricatured Franklin as a dowdy, selfish, bad-tempered woman who would not share the scientific findings she did not herself understand. In this lucidly written and fascinating biography Brenda Maddox sets the record straight and pays tribute to a distinguished scientist who, in spite of the difficulties placed in her way by a frequently misogynistic working environment, made an immensely important contribution to the work on the molecular structure of genes, the secret of life. Reading letters written to and by Rosalind from childhood until her death from ovarian cancer when she was in her early 30s and speaking to the scientists with whom she worked, including Crick, Watson and Wilkins, Maddox has been able to paint the portrait of a dedicated, hard-working and courageous woman who had made a name for herself and published many papers long before she came to King's. She was loyal to her Jewish family and never afraid to speak her mind. Not one to suffer fools gladly, she could be brusque but she could and did inspire love and loyalty and was mourned not only by friends and family but also by colleagues in Paris and London. It is rare to find writing as clear as this; complicated scientific experiments and problems are carefully explained so that both the scientist and the non-scientist can understand and enjoy this book. Watson and Crick of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, along with Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel prize. Years later, Rosalind Franklin's part in the discoveries was acknowledged; there is even a building at King's College London named after her and Wilkins. The tragedy of this story is imagining what more she might have achieved had she lived. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Brenda Maddox is an award-winning biographer whose work has been translanted into ten languages. Her biography of Nora Joyce won the Los Angeles Times Biography Award, the Silver P.E.N. Award and was shortlisted for the US National Book Award. D.H. Lawrence: The Married Man won the Whitbread Biography Award in 1994. George's Ghosts: A New Life of W.B. Yeats was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 1998. And Rosalind Franklin: the Dark Lady of DNA won the English-Speaking Union biography prize for 2002-3 as well as the Los Angeles Times science book award in 2003. Her most recent book is Freud's Wizard: the Enigma of Ernest Jones, about Freud's adroit champion and rescuer. As a journalist, Maddox was on the staff of the Economist for more than two decades. She later became media columnist for the Daily Telegraph, then for The Times. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of its council, and also a board member of the British Journalism Review. She lives in London and in mid-Wales.

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