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Atlantis Book Reviews Atlantis Book Reviews Anne Rosalind Franklin was a brilliant young Rosalind Franklin and DNA Sayre. New York: Norton, 1975- Pp. 221. British scientist who died in 1958 at the age of 37- Death deprived her of the Nobel prize for her work in connec• tion with the structure of DNA, the discovery which unlocked the centuries old mystery of the hereditary process. But sexism in the scientific community robbed her of the knowledge that her work in crystallography was crucial to the three men--James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins--who shared the prize four years later. Literally her work was stolen, passed on to Watson by Maurice Wilkins with• out her consent; nor did she ever learn later or suspect that anything improper had taken place. That this could hap• pen in the world of science, la carriere ouverte aux talents, the discipline which more than any other can claim uni• versality and independence from pre• vailing prejudices, writing its own history in the language of scepticism and dissent from dogma is especially ironic, and will be denied by all who continue to believe that, apart from a few bad apples, the scientific community is a world of dedicated scholars, lab• ouring anonymously in the service of truth. That there has been no protest launched against a serious breach of professional ethics is indicative of the status of women in science. Anne Sayre's biography of Rosalind Franklin attempts to undo the injustice, revealing en passant the sexist poli• ROSALIND FRANKLIN tics in science. Yet she also shares in its mystique. Future historians of that make for scientific competence. science may restore Rosalind Franklin Paradoxically, women have been excluded to her proper place, correcting the from science in the past on the grounds prejudicial version given by James Wat• that they rely too heavily on intuition son in The Double Helix,(1) but as long and not enough on cogn i t i ve ^ski 11 s . as the mask and sacred aura of science But, nowadays, as science is being re• remain intact, male dominance remains written to emphasize creativity more assured, and an environment maintained than logic, women are described as de• where male colleagues can appropriate ficient in intuition. Watson, in The the findings of women, take credit for Double Hel ix and CP. Snow (reviewing their work and keep them in their place, Anne Sayre's book in The New York Review receiving scarcely more .than a slap on of Books)(2) both claim that Rosalind the wrist. Rosalind Franklin, a tough- Franklin fell short of greatness because minded scientist with no illusions her mind would not leap ahead of facts. about humankind, never doubted the pro• Whatever skills or combinations of them fessional integrity of the men who psychologists decide are required for cheated her. science, women possess them to a lesser degree than men. Hence, women are It is our worship of and deep reverence destined to teach science rather than for the sanctity of science that ac• create it, to instruct elementary and counts for so few women mentioned in high school students rather than univer• the history of science, for their under- sity students, carry out routine labor• representation in science faculties, atory procedures rather than innovate, science foundations and granting agen• assist men in working on problems which cies, for their negative stereotype. they or other men define, clustering in Women in science are like women in pre- the biological sciences rather than the literate societies: they are regarded more prestigious ones of Physics and as unclean, permitted to approach but Chemistry. So, despite her true grit not look directly upon totemic sites, in achieving advanced degrees in science, forbidden to handle totemic objects or despite the sneers and snickers she has participate in sacred ritual. Science, endured as being "unfeminine" or worse, the secular counterpart of religion, ob• the woman scientist winds up replica• serves the same taboos, but in the ting the conventional roles of women as •modern version the stigma is part social socializers of the young, helpers of —women are unable to give the total men and cleaners-up of other people's commitment required—and part mental: messes. nature has denied women the aptitudes— a "thing" rather than a "person" orien• The tragedy is that women who do go in• tation—and intellectual ski 1 Is—h i gh to science knowing the stereotype of levels of abstraction and reasoning-- them to be false so often remain silent, acquiescing in it by curbing their as• day basis as any other form of creativ• pirations, denying their endowment, ity. The Double He 1i x also confirmed c scribing their inequality as a divi• our suspicions that in science, just as sion of labour, making themselves over in any other field, success depends into either the nurturant mother-nurse upon being in the right place at the figure or the boyish woman who has right time, plugged into the right net• grown older but never outgrown the works and knowing the right people. latency phase of her psycho-sexual Finally, it made clear that the scien• development. Either way they sustain tist's drive may be as profane as the the fact of male superiority and its hustler's in the market place. All of legitimation. The damage they do them• this and an adventure story, too. selves both economically and psycholog• ically has yet to be fully reckoned, Two young scientists came together more but there is no doubt that the silence by accident than design at the Caven• and conformity of women in science made dish laboratories (Cambridge) in the Rosalind Franklin's case unusual but early 1950s. Watson, the gangling not except i ona 1. American still under 25, educated in the Middle West, part Huckleberry Finn All of this might never have come to and part Jimmy Stewart, puzzled by light if James Watson had not written British mores, frequently gauche, he The Dogble He 1ix, a candid inside ac• was that endearing figure of American count of how he and Francis Crick populist legend, the Yank at Oxford. arrived at their discovery. The Double Crick, British, still working on his He 1ix was a breezy, informal story Ph.D. was the erratic genius, the spiced with little bits of gossip about Luftmensch, totally absorbed in abs• a lot of big names, disclosing how truse theories with a strange habit of things work in the backrooms of famous speaking too loudly which made him an laboratories, written at a level the unwelcome guest at high table. Both layperson could understand and amusing outsiders, both tolerated in the demo• for the professional. It had just the cratic Republic of science. right touch of irreverence, showing the distance between the ideal model of They were ideal collaborators but the scientific activity, the model we all odds were stacked against them. First, learn in school of orderly, logical, in the rationalized organization of step-by-step progress and the reality British science, work on DNA was as• with its elements of chance, the vagar• signed to another lab, King's College ies of funding, the gambles that didn't (London) under the direction of Maurice pay off and those that did. Scientific Wilkins. Accordingly, they were ad• creativity is a wayward process, as monished by the Director of Cavendish digressive and irrational on a day to not to work on DNA, a directive they chose to ignore. And second, Linus scientists for hard evidence, working Pauling, the distinguished scientist on DNA under the supervision of at Cal. Tech and several times winner Maurice Wilkins; in other words, a fine of the Nobel prize, was close to discov• technician, an earth-bound data gather• ering the structure of DNA. Part of er and an assistant to someone else. the fun and much of the suspense of The In this account, she could hardly have Double He 1ix is the race with Pauling, been a major figure, but could have as the two young unknowns take various been a major obstruction. Watson's wrong turns, overlook clues, feed on descriptions of her personality are leaks of information about Pauling's less than flattering, but he is so work, are put back on the right track frank about his own warts and about by friends who drop in or visitors to those of others with far bigger repu• the lab. Will the two young Davids tations that it slips by. "Rosy," as slay Goliath? he calls hei—tutoyer form which offends Sayre and which she regards as The truth is, according to Anne Sayre part of the put-down which it may have and Pauling's son, the race against been since he never refers to anyone Pauling was more fiction than fact. else in this diminutive form but which Pauling was interested in DNA but not I am inclined to attribute to the exclusively, and was not coming down folksy informality of American groves the home stretch in a dead heat. The of academe—emerges as hysterical, real race, according to Sayre, was with capable of frightening outbursts of King's College; that is, with Maurice temper, coldly logical, difficult to Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin who had get along with, secretive and lacking the administrative green light to work the larger scientific imagination; a on DNA and were making progress in that rather thinly disguised witch. direction although the relationship be• Taken cogether, her personality, her tween them, Wilkins and Franklin, was subordinate status and her limited decidedly antagonistic.
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