The Secret of Life: Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick, and the Discovery of DNA’s Double Helix

This collective biography attempts to strip away the hyperbole that has grown up around the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. Markel (history of medicine, Univ. of Michigan; Anatomy of Addiction) begins the book with a brief sketch of the history of the field now known as genetics and recounts the early lives and careers of the scientists Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Maurice Wilkins, and Linus Pauling. This sets the stage for Markel’s detailed examination of the research on X-ray diffraction at Kings College, London, and the theoretical work done at the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge in the early 1950s. No explosive new details are revealed, but Markel unifies the timeline and gives voice to the scientific and personal thoughts of the principal scientists, found in their correspondence, lab notebooks, memoirs, and interviews. Markel’s book portrays each scientist as a complex individual and is firm in the conclusion that Franklin was denied due credit for the DNA discovery. (One of her colleagues and her supervisor had showed her data to Watson, precipitating his breakthrough on the DNA model.)