Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA

“A meticulous biography . . . [Rosalind Franklin] was the unacknowledged heroine of DNA, the Sylvia Plath of molecular biology.” —The Economist

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Science and Technology

In March 1953 Maurice Wilkins of King’s College London, announced the departure of his obstructive colleague, Rosalind Franklin to rival Cavendish Laboratory scientist, Francis Crick. But it was too late. Franklin’s unpublished data and crucial photograph of DNA had already been seen by her competitors at the Cambridge University lab. With the aid of these, plus their own knowledge, Watson and Crick discovered the structure of the molecule that genes are composed of—DNA. Five years later, Rosalind died of ovarian cancer. In 1962 Wilkins, Crick and Watson were awarded the Nobel Prize. Franklin’s part was forgotten until she was caricatured in Watson’s book The Double Helix.

In this full and balanced biography award-winning writer Brenda Maddox tells the powerful story of a remarkably single-minded, forthright and tempestuous young woman who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century.

“A sensitive, sympathetic look at a woman whose life was greater than the sum of its parts.” —New York Times Book Review

“Lively, absorbing and even handed . . . What emerges is the complex portrait of a passionate, flawed, courageous women.” —Washington Post Book World

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

© 2024 Harper Perennial (Ebook): 9780062283504

Release date

Ebook: February 27, 2024