Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA

Name: Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
Author: Brenda Maddox
ISBN: 9780062283504

Brenda Maddox

award won

score

Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA

Brenda Maddox

award won

score

Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize 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 Franklin's unpublished data and crucial photograph of DNA had already been seen by her competitors at the Cambridge University lab.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 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.

Buy this book at Amazon