The Double Helix

Francis Crick is a brilliant, scientific maverick, and Watson’s partner in solving the structure of DNA. They quickly strike up a scientific and personal bond when Watson arrives at the Cavendish, focused around their joint ambition and their passion for DNA.

Crick is thirty-five years old at the time, and working on a PhD concerning protein structures. He grew up in Northampton, originally studied physics, and worked during the war at the Admiralty Research Laboratory, before turning his attention to biology.

When Watson meets him in 1951, he has no major scientific accomplishments to his name, but he is convinced of his own talents. “Never in a modest mood” (7) as Watson puts it, he is endlessly and vigorously throwing out new theories relating to his own work and the work of other scientists. This earns him something of a negative reputation. He is characterised at first by the power and pace of his voice, and is known by some for “talking too much” (7).

He is excitable, manic, a force to be reckoned with, and his loud and forthright approach is too much for some, especially the director of the Cavendish lab, Lawrence Bragg. His personality alienates him from the more official world of Cambridge academic society. Watson, however, delights in Crick’s energy, outlandishness and talent.

Doubtless a brilliant mind, Crick’s thinking is quick and creative, with an ability to see patterns and possibilities. His approach, though, can be overly expansive. He jumps from one problem to the next, seeking to lay the foundations for multiple solutions and is impatient with the more laborious evidential side of scientific work. Like Watson he sees a distinction between run-of-the-mill science, and the world of ground breaking discoveries they are aspiring to. 

Crick’s lack of tact, and his tendency to get carried away, means it is Watson, of the two, who is sent off to lectures and meetings to gather clues about DNA. Interestingly, we don’t see or hear of Crick’s presence at the large scientific gatherings mentioned in the narrative. He is, however, an active part of their Cambridge social scene, along with his wife Odile.

The couple represent, to Watson, the “vitality of English intellectual life” (46). Their values are liberal, maybe even libertine for the time. Outside of science, their interests focus on cultivated fashion and style, and gossip about the “popsies” of Cambridge.

Crick’s contribution to DNA is key not only in establishing their approach, but in devising a theory for detecting helical patterns and helping define the final structure. The crucial ingredient is neither Watson or Crick, but the power of their combined efforts. As Watson notes, “without Francis’s re-assuring chatter my inability to think in three dimensions became all too apparent” (112). It is worth noting that neither of them were officially given DNA as a project at the Cavendish, and were officially working on other projects, but dedicated their own time and energies to DNA when they could.

As with Watson, Crick’s character evolves throughout the narrative. He never loses his effervescence, but towards the end we see a more methodical and focused figure emerging, working hard to tie up the final pieces in the DNA solution.

Maurice Wilkins is a physicist and molecular biologist based at Kings College, London, in the early 1950s. At the time Watson becomes interested in DNA, Wilkins is the recognised authority on the matter in England. Indeed, it is his lecture at a conference in Naples that first excited Watson about DNA work.

His initial work on DNA produced the first x-ray diffraction images, which were crucial in determining the direction of Watson and Crick’s research. He was one of the first to see the importance of DNA in understanding how genes function.

Along with Rosalind Franklin, Wilkins worked on DNA at Kings in the early 1950s, with a strong experimental focus. Their approach centred on capturing and interpreting better quality x-ray images of DNA molecules, while Watson and Crick proceeded with a kind of theoretical guessing game, using molecular models and the laws of chemistry to determine possible structures.

At the time, molecular work on DNA in the UK was considered Wilkins’ “personal property” (12), so there were running tensions surrounding Watson and Crick’s more recent speculative ventures into this field. The most controversial issue involves Wilkins showing Watson one of Franklin’s best x-ray photos without her permission.

In contrast to Crick and Watson, Wilkins has a calm and quiet nature. There is no rush or bluster in his approach. Though clearly very gifted, he works in a steady, understated way, and doesn’t overtly appear to be caught up in their sense of a race. From the beginning his reserve and steadiness frustrates both Watson and Crick. It is possible he doesn’t share their driving ambition. Rooted in more empirical approaches, he is slow to be convinced of the value of their model building, or of the threat that Pauling poses. He shows, however, genuine enthusiasm at their eventual breakthrough.

Wilkins is inevitably a figure at the margins of Watson’s version of events, centred as it is on his and Crick’s endeavours. In the narrative, a lot of his focus is on the personal battle he is involved in with Franklin. When Watson wants to talk science, he relapses into describing the latest saga in this worsening relationship. Watson suggests, somewhat problematically, that Wilkins’ inability to really focus on the DNA problem is linked to her presence. On the flipside, Wilkins was the first to know of her findings, so perhaps there’s an argument to be made here about the value of making the best of one’s circumstances. 

There is an obvious contrast with Watson, who is always quick to take advantage of or change situations to aid his work, and Wilkins, who allowed his situation to get on top of him. In other circumstances, maybe Wilkins could have been the one to uncover the structure of DNA; there is something slightly poignant in his letter to Watson saying he’s ready to start afresh on the problem at the very moment Crick and Watson have found the solution.

While the final solution was Crick’s and Watson’s, Wilkins laid the crucial grounds for this, and, along with Franklin, it was their evidence which enabled the structure to be both postulated and proved. This is acknowledged in the fact that he too was awarded a NobelPrize for their combined work on DNA in 1962. 

Franklin is an English chemist and cryptographer who started working with Wilkins at Kings in 1950. Together they were using x-ray diffraction techniques to determine the structure of DNA. She is 31 when the events in Watson’s account begin.

A remarkably gifted scientist, it is her B-structure x-ray photo which proves crucial in leading Watson and Crick to the final solution, and then also proving that solution to be correct. She, like Wilkins, is unimpressed by their modelling approach and sees the answer growing from continuing work on x-ray diffraction images. In reality, it took both to reach the solution: a combination of the theoretical and evidential approach.

Up until the final discovery, Franklin remains deeply sceptical about their theory that the structure of DNA is helical. She is presented as a hostile and dismissive figure, something of an antagonist in the narrative. That said, Watson’s presentation of her immediately softens in Chapter 27, and he speaks of a personal and scientific reconciliation, borne out more fully in the Epilogue. At that point, her “first rate” scientific mind, her “generosity” and “courage and integrity” (155, 164) are proclaimed, but this is in stark contrast to the depiction of her character up until this point.

Her scientific talent is reluctantly granted in earlier chapters, but the main focus is on her domineering and belligerent nature, and her inability to control her emotions. Watson very much sides with Wilkins in his portrayal of the powerstruggle between the two.

Franklin is presented as a problem, even an enigma, on account of her gender. She is both a woman and a scientist, two things that Watson seemingly can’t fit together, for all his scientific brilliance. Her presence complicates traditional gender roles and impinges upon the male domain of science.

His early comments about her reflect this dichotomy. Watson stresses how she “didn’t emphasise her feminine qualities” (14) and that he wondered what she’d look like if she did. She is presented as dressing starkly and plainly, in a deliberately non-feminine way. Her voice is said to lack “warmth or frivolity,”yet she remains “interesting” to Watson, and he mentally tries to imagine her in a more comforting and conventional feminine guise (49).

Only in retrospect is it considered that her stern way of dressing and acting grew from the challenge of her situation as an intelligent woman seeking equality in a male-dominated profession where women weren’t taken seriously. The way she is presented in the narrative, by an intelligent and in other ways progressive narrator, indicates something of that challenge. Watson’s portrayal of Franklin thus inadvertently sheds light on the gender norms of 1950s culture.

Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958, at the age of only 37. In her alltoo brief scientific careershe accomplished a great deal, and, in all likelihood, would have shared the NobelPrize with Wilkins, Watson and Crick, were it not for her untimely death.  

Pauling is a pre-eminent chemist working at Cal Tech when the events in Watson’s narrative take place. In his early 50s at the time, he is very much at the height of his power: the world’s leading chemist, with a host of scientific accomplishments to his name, and a global reputation as a peace activist. He was by then something of a scientific celebrity, his lectures packed with “swarms of admirers” (97).

It is Pauling’s ground-breaking postulation of a helix structure in proteins and his approach to finding it (relying on the simple laws of structural chemistry and 3D models) that provides the inspiration for Watson and Crick’s work on DNA. They set off to “beat Pauling at his own game” (34).

The appeal of Pauling’s approach lies partly in its simplicity: he assumes nature works efficiently and begins by seeking out the most simple and elegant solution that the laws of chemistry allow. In later chapters, Pauling turns his attention to DNA and becomes the main scientific rival for Watson and Crick in their race for a solution.

It’s intriguing that his own initial attack on DNA involves a seeming blunder. This may suggest the complexity of the problem the DNA molecule posed, and a certain over-eagerness to find a theory that works, even to the point of bending the laws of chemistry. Crucial also is that Pauling is seen to be working independently and against the collaborative efforts of the Cavendish and Kings group.

In the early stages of the narrative, Pauling is very much seen by Watson as a figure to be emulated. He is the living embodiment of the great scientist. To beat Pauling to the answer of DNA is a matter of great pride for Watson.

It is not only the substance but the style of Pauling’s science which Watson admires. Pauling is portrayed as a consummate performer, delivering lectures with “dramatic flair” (25) and a sprinkling of American showbiz. His written style is also seen as something to emulate, with its assured and pregnant turns of phrase.

Watson is also in sympathy with Pauling’s internationalist values and anti-establishment political commitments.  

Director of the Cavendish lab in the early 50s, Bragg is a pre-eminent physicist and crystallographer. He won the NobelPrize in 1915 for establishing the principles of x-ray diffraction techniques in the analysis of crystals, something which made possible the work on DNA undertaken by Wilkins, Franklin, Watson and Crick. 

Bragg is presented sympathetically in Watson’s narrative. On first impression, he seems to Watson something of an old English gent, a “curiosity out of the past” (30), with his successes behind him, and now most likely in “effective retirement” (30). But this is soon corrected, and Watson notes his direct involvement in the cutting-edge work at the Cavendish. He takes genuine pride in Watson and Crick’s solution, not least because it offers a much-needed victory over Cal Tech and Pauling.

Reserved by nature, in the old English fashion, and appreciating peace and serenity, he is depicted in comic contrast to the loud and ebullient figure of Crick. The two have a fraught relationship, with Bragg revealing at one point that Crick “makes his ears buzz” (44).

It is Bragg who writes the perceptive Foreword to Watson’s book, arguing that while Watson’s account is to be taken as just one person’s perspective, and needs to be read forgivingly, it represents a valuable contribution to our understanding of science.