Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA is the biography of the physical chemist and X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, whose research played a fundamental part in elucidating the structure of the molecule of life – DNA. The author of the book, Brenda Maddox, was her friend. The biography is derived from interviews and correspondence with Rosalind’s relatives, family, friends, her letter and papers of scientists she corresponded with and her scientific archives. In doing so Maddox has reformed a more complete biography of Rosalind we now know better. Before Maddox Rosalind’s other friend, Anne Sayre, had published a biography in defense of Rosalind’s image that was negatively portrayed in James Watson’s memoir. Maddox offered us a complete…show more content… It is the pedestal place in her career. The author tells us that Rosalind did not enjoy her 27 months stay there for a number of reasons. There she worked uneasily with Maurice Wilkins, who showed her revelatory X-rays of DNA to Watson. King’s did not permit women in the faculty common rooms. She was despised by most of her co-workers for her personality. And it was a hostile and sexist environment for her generally. Maddox describes the enormous contributions Rosalind made over a two year period in King’s to the crystallography of DNA. She explains the molecular biology of her day and the painstaking physical and intellectual intricacies of making and interpreting x-rays of crystalline molecules. She found ways of keeping the fibers hydrated, so that the material remained stable over the time it took to record images. She showed that there are two forms, A and B, distinguished by their polycrystallinity. She used Patterson functions to determine that the phosphate atoms sit on the outside. And off course, she recorded with Gosling, the famous image 51. Maddox tells us that it was from Gosling that Wilkins received photo 51 who in turn showed Watson and Crick. It was a serious ethical offense that Watson and Crick used her image without getting her permission. Photo 51 was an image she acquired in painstaking care and their action was unethical and tantamount to plagiarism. Furthermore in their publishing they put the work of Franklin as a confirmatory experiment, giving her little credit, where in fact it had a pivotal play (revealing the helical nature and dimensions of the molecule) in their discovery of the structure. The author tries to make a connection between Rosalind’s cautions not to publish her DNA model based on the images she developed to her Anglo-Jewish upbringing, a culture that had a low margin for error. It is not due because she lacked mathematical or scientific
