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James D. Watson's The Double Helix

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In the year 1968, James D. Watson published The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure in DNA fours years after winning the Nobel Prize alongside Francis Crick and Maurice Wilson. Watson provides an account of both of these figures in his text, but he also introduces another figure who remained hidden in light of Watson, Crick, and Wilson’s fame. This hidden figure was Rosalind Franklin whose story would be known as one of the greatest cases of injustice and sexism within the scientific community. It was Franklin’s work on DNA, specifically her crystal clear x-ray diffraction image of DNA labeled “photo 51,” that lead to the discovery of the structure of DNA and would be taken from her without any recognition. Almost …show more content…

Rather than focusing on her mind as he does with Francis Crick, he is fixated with her appearance and lack of femininity. According to Watson, “By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes (Watson, 1998).” In the paragraph previous to the one where he goes into elaborate detail on her appearance, he professes that she is a highly skilled crystallographer that is capable of conducting expert scientific research. However, using the sarcastic nickname of Rosy, he states that she created more problems in the Wilkins lab because “she claimed that she had been given DNA for her own problem and would not think of herself as Maurice’s assistant (Watson, 1998).” In his villainous characterization of Franklin, he makes the claim that because she would not submit to Wilkins “Rosy had to go or be put in her place (Watson, 1998).” Although Watson does not explicitly say this, his written work implies that Franklin was a woman who asserted dominance. In comparison to Francis Crick who Watson praises for his characterization as a dominant figure, Franklin is harshly criticized for her dominance based on her gender and femininity. Being assertive as a woman is something that deviates from the gender societal stereotype that women are supposed be submissive beings and Watson is fixated on this. The woman who ardently researched DNA and discovered the structure of DNA through her skills as an accomplished crystallographer was reduced by Watson to nothing more than a feminist who could not keep her emotions under control and was better suited in “another person’s lab (Watson,

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