Maurice Wilkins

wilkins gets a bad rap -- and he knew it when he wrote this autobiography. some parts were strategically vague (my opinion) but the book offered his side of ths story, which was never touched upon firsthand by the other DNA discoverers. to them, Wilkins was just the guy in the other room. He isnt. The biography is well-written, with some of the most poetic passages I've ever read from any scientist. Though i suspiciously believe he went out of his way to paint himself as a tragic figure, the autobiography was a great read and my favorite out of all the double helix discoverers' i've read (and i've read all of them)… (altro)

scovery of the double helical structure of DNA. He was the guy who really got the study of the x-ray diffraction studies going, and showed that the features seen were universal to a variety of different organisms, and therefore that it was an important scientific problem. He showed that the structure was probably helical, got Rosilind Franklin started on the problem, and was the link from her to Watson and Crick, who finally made the famous model that shook the world.

This book, published fifty years after, fills in some of the details of the event, correcting and contesting some claims made by others who have written on it. Some of his corrections are quite convincing. For example, a claim was made in one of the books on this affair that his research group contained only one other female, implying that he was something of a misogynist, while a picture of his laboratory coworkers in the book is about half female.

The tension between him and Franklin is made much of in historical accounts, and Wilkins unflinchingly covers this, and is pretty hard on himself too. The incident graphically shows how people from very different cultures (Franklin was a rich, pushy Jew) who are ostensibly working on a common goal can fail. Diversity in a laboratory group is not always the asset that the universal dogma asserts. His regrets and "could'a shoulda's" are revealing and even moving at times.

Another revelation in the book was his involvement in the Communist party, and his flirtation with Freudian psychology. A scientific education unfortunately appears not to immunize one completely from quackery.

The thing I took away from the book is how the simple stories generated and perpetuated in the mass media and in historical accounts are almost always wrong in important ways. Scientific discoveries and important inventions are almost always complicated events, only part of which is even known and understood by any single writer or even the actors involved. But more than that, practically every writer has his prejudices and angles to massage. Autobiographers are no exception to this, but Wilkins has added to our understanding, and should only be applauded for it.… (altro)