The Double Helix

The Double Helix : A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA is an autobiographical account of the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA written by James D. Watson and published in 1968. It was and remains a controversial account. Though it was originally slated to be published by Harvard University Press, Watson's home university dropped the arrangement after protestations from Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, and it was published privately. It has been criticized as being excessively sexist towards Rosalind Franklin, another participant in the discovery, who was deceased by the time Watson's book was written.

The intimate first-person account of scientific discovery was unusual for its time. The book has been hailed as a highly personal view of scientific work, with its author seemingly caring only about the glory of priority and willing to appropriate data from others surreptitiously in order to obtain it.

A 1980 Norton Critical Edition of The Double Helix edited by Gunther Stent, analyzed the events surrounding its initial publication. It presents a selection of both positive and negative reviews of the book, by such figures as Philip Morrison, Richard Lewontin, Alex Comfort, Jacob Bronowski, and more in-depth analyses by Peter Medawar, Robert K. Merton, and Andre Lwoff. Erwin Chargaff declined permission to reprint his unsympathetic review from the March 29, 1968 issue of Science, but letters in response from Max Perutz, Maurice Wilkins, and Watson are printed. Also included are retrospectives from a 1974 edition of Nature written by Francis Crick and Linus Pauling, and an analysis of Franklin's work by her student Aaron Klug. The Norton edition concludes with the 1953 papers on DNA structure as published in Nature.

The book was made into a film dramatization as The Race for the Double Helix in 1987.

In 1998, the Modern Library placed The Double Helix at number 7 on its list of the 20th century's best works of non-fiction.

Other criticism

The booked leaned heavily on personalities, and some, like Rosalind Franklin, were treated cartoonishly.

Burton Feldman

In the book Rosalind Franklin and DNA, author Anne Sayre is very critical of Watson's account. She claims that Watson's book did not give a balanced description of Rosalind Franklin and the nature of her interactions with Maurice Wilkins at King's College, London. Sayre's book raises doubts about the ethics of how Watson and Crick used some of Franklin's results and whether adequate credit was given to her. Watson had very limited contact with Franklin during the time she worked on DNA. By providing more information about Franklin's life than was included in Watson's book, it was possible for Sayre to provide a different perspective on the role Franklin played in Watson and Crick's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. (See: King's College (London) DNA Controversy)

In the book's preface, Watson explains that he is describing his impressions at the time of the events, and not at the time he wrote the book. In the epilogue Watson writes; Since my initial impressions about [Franklin], both scientific and personal (as recorded in the early pages of this book) were often wrong I want to say something here about her achievements. He goes on to describe her superb work, and, despite this, the enormous barriers she faced as a woman in the field of science. He also acknowledged that it took years to overcome their bickering before appreciating Franklin's generosity and integrity.

References

• James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968), Atheneum, 1980, ISBN 0-689-70602-2, OCLC 6197022
• James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1980 Norton Critical Edition), editor Gunther Stent, W.W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-95075-1.
• Maddox, Brenda (2002). Rosalind Franklin: the dark lady of DNA. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-393-32044-8.
• Sayre, Anne. Rosalind Franklin and DNA (1975), New York: W.W. Norton and Company, ISBN 0-393-32044-8
• Wilkins, Maurice, The Third Man of the Double Helix: The Autobiography (2003), Oxford U Press, ISBN 0-19-860665-6

==External links==

• Photos of the first edition of The Double Helix
• A Reader's Guide to The Double Helix, 2009 by Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University
• Resource Page for The Double Helix used in Biology 20, The Foundations of Living Systems, a course at Brown University'Italic text''--222.101.9.93 (talk) 02:55, 6 June 2012 (UTC)'