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
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.
p. 57 Rosalind’s undergraduate notebook headed ‘Crystal Physics’. (Churchill Archives Centre, Franklin Papers FRKN 3/23)
p. 89 Graphitising and non-graphitising carbons. (From Crystallite growth in graphitising and non-graphitising carbons by Rosalind E. Franklin, Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1951, A209, p 212)
p. 154 DNA ‘A’ and ‘B’ forms. (Reprinted from C.J. Alden and S.H. Kim, Journal of Molecular Biology 132, pp. 411—34, 1979 by permission of the publisher Academic Press/ Elsevier Science)
p. 197 Rosalind’s Photograph 51 of the B form of DNA. (Jeremy Norman)
p. 203 How the double helix copies itself. (Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, and of Weidenfeld & Nicolson from The Double Helix by James D. Watson. Copyright © 1968 Elizabeth L. Watson, as Trustee under Agreement with James D. Watson dated 2 November, 1971; copyright renewed © 1996 James D. Watson)
p. 230 What TMV (tobacco mosaic virus) does to tobacco leaves. (L. Bos, Plant Research International, WUR, Wageningen, the Netherlands)
p. 259 Summary of the first analysis of the structure of TMV. (From a review by A. Klug and D.L.D. Caspar entitled Structure of Small Viruses published in Advances in Virus Research, Academic Press, 1960)
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.
PROLOGUE
‘It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.’
This celebrated understatement published in Nature on 25 April 1953 was Francis Crick’s and James Watson’s way of heralding the significance of their discovery of the double helix, the self-copying spirals of the DNA molecule that carry the genetic message from old cells to new. Another statement, written in a private letter on 7 March 1953, has achieved a fame of its own: ‘Our dark lady is leaving us next week.’
For Francis Crick of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, the ‘dark lady’ needed no further identification. For nearly two years, his friend Maurice Wilkins of the Biophysics Unit at King’s College London had been moaning about his obstructive female colleague, Rosalind Franklin. Now that she was abandoning King’s for Birkbeck, another University of London college, Wilkins was confident that he, Crick, and Watson, a young American working with Crick, together would solve the structure of DNA. But it was too late. By the time that Wilkins’s letter reached Cambridge, the pair whose names will be forever linked were looking at their completed model whose simplicity proclaimed that they had discovered the secret of life.
But could Watson and Crick have done it without the ‘dark lady’: Rosalind Franklin, the thirty-two-year-old physical chemist whose departure from King’s Wilkins so eagerly awaited? Her research data, which had reached them by a circuitous route and without her consent, had been crucial to their discovery. Watson’s glimpse of one of her X-ray photographs of DNA gave him and Crick the final boost to the summit. From the evidence of her notebooks, it is clear that she would have got there by herself before long.
The triumph was theirs, not hers. Rosalind Franklin remained virtually unknown outside her immediate circles until 1968 when Watson published The Double Helix, his brilliant, tactless and exciting personal account of the discovery. In it, she is the terrible ‘Rosy’, the bad-tempered bluestocking who hoarded her data and might have been pretty if she had taken off her glasses and done something interesting with her hair.
She looked quite different to the eminent physics professor J.D. Bernal, who brought her to Birkbeck in the spring and oversaw her five happy and productive years there. He described her in Nature: ‘As a scientist, Miss Franklin was distinguished by extreme clarity and perfection in everything she undertook. Her photographs are among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken.’
But Bernal’s words were elegiac. Rosalind Franklin’s life was cut short by ovarian cancer in 1958 when she was thirty-seven — four years before Watson, Crick and Wilkins won the Nobel prize for their DNA discovery and a decade before she was caricatured in a book to which, alone of the principals portrayed, she was unable to answer back.
Since Watson’s book, Rosalind Franklin has become a feminist icon, the Sylvia Plath of molecular biology, the woman whose gifts were sacrificed to the greater glory of th
e male. Yet this mythologising, intended to be reparative, has done her no favours. There was far more to her complex, fruitful, vigorous life than twenty-seven unhappy months at King’s College London. She achieved an international reputation in three different fields of scientific research while at the same time nourishing a passion for travel, a gift for friendship, a love of clothes and good food and a strong political conscience. She never flagged in her duties to the distinguished Anglo-Jewish family of which she was a loyal, if combative, member.
Determined from the age of twelve to become a scientist, Rosalind Franklin knew where she came from, under what constraints she laboured and where she wanted to go. From childhood, she strove to reconcile her privileges with her goals. She did not find life easy — as a woman, as a Jew, as a scientist. Many of those close to her did not find her easy either. The measure of her success lies in the strength of her friendships, the devotion of her colleagues, the vitality of her letters and a legacy of discovery that would do credit to a scientific career twice its length.
‘You look at science (or at least talk of it) as some sort of demoralising invention of man, something apart from real life, and which must be cautiously guarded and kept separate from everyday existence. But science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation of life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment . . .
I agree that faith is essential to success in life ... In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining.’
Rosalind Franklin as a Cambridge undergraduate arguing against her father’s faith in life after death.
Part One
Rosalind Franklin Page 1