Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA

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Scientists at work.

Disappointing

The most brilliant female British scientist of the 20th century

The true story behind a myth

Heartbreaking Story of a Woman Scientist

Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
Brenda Maddox
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0060985089
Release Date: 2003-09-30

Book Description

In 1962, Maurice Wilkins, Francis Crick, and James Watson received the Nobel Prize, but it was Rosalind Franklin's data and photographs of DNA that led to their discovery.

Brenda Maddox tells a powerful story of a remarkably single-minded, forthright, and tempestuous young woman who, at the age of fifteen, decided she was going to be a scientist, but who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century.

Customer Reviews:

Scientists at work........2007-04-22

After reading the book it is clear the scientific community is both collegial and cut throat. In Franklin's case, the lure of honor compels a fellow scientist to use Rosalind's research without giving her the credit she deserved in uncovering the structure of DNA. Maddox provides insight into the not always amicable inner workings of a research lab and the psychology of scientists.

As an elite, Jewish, female Francophile, Franklin was not an easy person to get along with, especially in the lab at King's College London under Dr. Randall. If she had a difficult personality though, she was anything but shy and certainly was not politically naive. She held her own in a male dominated environment and perhaps this is the reason she become known as the Dark Lady. Maddox does her best to give Franklin a balanced appraisal.

Scientists share information and materials through attendance at conferences and in social settings and keeping up with each other's work is expected. But, the use of Rosalind's unpublished material (the crucial photo 51 and experimental data) without her knowledge, to make a breakthrough discovery, is of questionable ethics.

The author presents some insight into the mentality of the scientist. She quotes Albert Einstein, "that a scientist makes science `the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the whirlpool of personal experience.'"(32). To Rosalind "science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated."(61) Is this why she found it so difficult to explain her work to family and friends? They simply could not understand?

Maddox notes: "it can be argued that scientific discovery is not creativity in the sense that artistic composition is. `Science differs from other realms of human endeavor in that its substance does not derive from the activity of those who practice it'"(213) Therefore it is interesting when an eminent scientist is caught in the trap of his own beliefs and exposed. This occurred when Rosalind corrected the eminent British virologist Norman W. Price. She was right, and had the proof, but he would not accept it, even in the face of convincing evidence to the contrary.

Disappointing.......2007-04-12

This is an essential book. I rushed to it after finishing The Double Helix, by James Watson; I was incensed by Watson's misogyny and eager to learn the other side of the story. And this is the main accomplishment of Maddox's book, that it does give the other side of the story in a thorough and detailed manner. Too often, however, Maddox's tone slips into defensiveness, and her feminism appears to be a position she arrived at not as a result of rational thinking but because of her bitterness at the many injustices women have suffered at the hands of men.

I was troubled by this. I admire Rosalind Franklin -- yes, I have to admit that my admiration was nourished to a great extent by Maddox's book -- but I'm put off by how much of her biography of Franklin is a direct, self-righteous and self-justifying response to James Watson's flippant comments in The Double Helix. I was disappointed, for instance, by how much time Maddox spends explaining how sophisticated Franklin's taste in fashion was, simply because Watson made a snide comment in his book about Franklin's clothes and hairdo.

Another problem with Maddox's narrative is its pace. I found the book very hard to get through; paragraph after paragraph plods on, heavy with detail and almost empty of energy. I read The Double Helix in three days, breathless with excitement; for all its flaws, Watson's telling of the story sparkles. I don't look, when I read, to be entertained at the expense of truth, but I don't want either to be given the truth in a dry and awkward way. And Maddox's syntax is often awkward; I found myself going back again and again over her sentences to figure out what she was trying to say.

This material -- the story of Rosalind Franklin's life -- needs a better and more evenhanded writer, one who has nothing to prove and is aware that a biography, no matter how well-intentioned, can, just like the badly-intentioned ones, tell only one side of the story.

The most brilliant female British scientist of the 20th century.......2007-01-10

Probably the most meticulously researched biography I have ever read. Maddox`s accounts of the personalities, not only of Rosalind, but of all the famed scientists she came into contact with,are breatktaking. And Rosalind,herself,comes across as human and humane besides having a brilliant mind.

The true story behind a myth.......2005-09-13

Rosalind Franklin is the closest that 20th century science has to a mythical figure. She had already died before the great majority of people had heard of her, but she sprang into prominence in James Watson's famous book The Double Helix. Watson's portrayal of her was not a kind one, and readers were left with the impression of a second-rank scientist, competent enough as an experimentalist, perhaps, but barely able to understand her own results and far too possessive to allow better scientists to analyse them and make their fortunes with them. It is important to emphasize to non-scientists that an unwillingness to hand over hard-won data to anyone who asks is almost a universal characteristic -- not at all a special fault of Franklin's. Watson's portrayal of himself and his friends was not particularly flattering in his book either, but the fact that he came over as a bit of a rogue himself only tended to reinforce his unattractive portrayal of Franklin.

It was obvious even when The Double Helix appeared that the "Rosy Franklin" described there was a crude caricature, and various people, most notably Anne Sayre, have tried over the years to rehabilitate her. Their efforts have resulted in a picture almost equally caricatural: a brilliant young scientist, subject to discrimination -- as a Jewish woman -- in the masculine Christian atmosphere of King's College, unable to to get the support she needed, cheated of her data by unscrupulous superiors and competitors, denied her rightful Nobel Prize. Brenda Maddox, in this excellent biography, points out that "In ensuing decades, the myth of the wronged heroine has grown, nourished by the fact of Rosalind's early death. Rosalind Franklin has become the symbol of woman's lowly position in the pantheon of science." Now that Chicago has a Rosalind Franklin University, and even King's College has a Franklin-Wilkins Building, there is little danger that she will be forgotten.

Maddox has interviewed nearly all of the major players -- with the obvious and unavoidable exception of Franklin herself -- and has written a balanced account of the story behind the myth. Certainly, Franklin was brilliant, and given time she might well have arrived at the structure of DNA herself, but there is nothing to suggest that she herself thought she had been cheated of the discovery, and she could not have received the Nobel Prize for it, because she had already died by the time it was awarded, and it is never awarded posthumously. Moreover, in the years after the discovery she enjoyed good relations with both Watson and Francis Crick, though not with her former superior at King's, Maurice Wilkins.

Heartbreaking Story of a Woman Scientist.......2005-07-23

This book tells the story of a woman scientist who I had never heard of. Her work on DNA is only a part of the book. She died of ovarian cancer in her late thirties. The book suggests that she might have married a fellow scientist, Don Caspar, had she not become ill. The science is accessible and held my interest. Maddox by no means paints her as a saint but presents both the positive and negative. It sounded like she may have been arrogant at times but she certainly had no picnic in making her way in science in the fifties. Very moving story.

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Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of Dna
Brenda Maddox
Manufacturer: HARPER COLLINS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0002571498

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ROSALIND FRANKLIN The Dark Lady of DNA
Brenda Maddox
Manufacturer: Harper Collins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0965477886

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Rosalind Franklin. The Dark Lady of DNA.
Rosalind] MADDOX, Brenda. [FRANKLIN
Manufacturer: Harper Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000M4OFZA

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Rosalind Franklin: the Dark Lady of Dna
Brenda Maddox
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NR95NS

Crystallizing a life in science. (Scientists' Bookshelf).(Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA)(Book Review): An article from: American Scientist

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Crystallizing a life in science. (Scientists' Bookshelf).(Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA)(Book Review): An article from: American Scientist
Angela N.H. Creager
Manufacturer: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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An embattled woman.(Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA)(Book Review) (book review): An article from: Queen's Quarterly

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An embattled woman.(Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA)(Book Review) (book review): An article from: Queen's Quarterly
J.W. Grove
Manufacturer: Queen's Quarterly
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Binding: Digital

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This digital document is an article from Queen's Quarterly, published by Queen's Quarterly on March 22, 2003. The length of the article is 2230 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: An embattled woman.(Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA)(Book Review) (book review)
Author: J.W. Grove
Publication: Queen's Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2003
Publisher: Queen's Quarterly
Volume: 110 Issue: 1 Page: 77(11)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
Brenda Maddox
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OE9ZM6

Book Description

The Iberian peninsula is one of the richest botanical regions of Europe. The Flowers of South-West Europe is an unique field guide, describing over 2,400 different flowering plants which can be found in the region. Hundreds of line drawings, colour photographs, and detailed keys are included for easy identification. The book also provides, at first hand, a unique account of the best plant-hunting areas of the region. The provision of maps, photographs of the landscape, and double-page spreads of local plants will give readers a lively idea of where to go and what to look for. First published in paperback in 1988, this classic text by Oleg Polunin - one of the foremost British botanists of his generation - has never been superseded. No other comparable guide to the flora of south-west Europe exists. This reissued version will delight all botanists, gardeners, conservationists, and naturalists with an interest in the flowering plants of the Iberian peninsula, as well as holiday makers in this popular region wishing to learn more about its flora.

Book Description

Get hold of the city with hundreds of fascinating entries about Chicago history, characters, architecture and places. Chicago writers Kenan Heise and Mark Frazel have updated their best-selling user's guide to the Windy City for the 1990s and beyond with a new section including the newest and latest in Chicago's story.

Customer Reviews:

Entertaining if a tad eclectic.......2007-07-25

Anyone who is interested in Chicago and already knows a bit about it should enjoy this book, which, by the way, appears in an original (1987) and revised (1993) edition; this is not immediately clear from the Amazon record.

Kenan Heise is one of the many historians, between popular and scholarly, who have made their own mark on the Chicago bibliography. For a while he worked for the Chicago Tribune, long after that newspaper was nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Republican Party, and, until a few years ago, ran a bricks-and-mortar Chicago Historical Bookstore (in Evanston).

I say that it's a bit eclectic; how could it be otherwise, a book about Chicago in such a small compass. Even the recent Encyclopedia of Chicago (U of Chi; 2004) leaves things out. Anyone who is acquainted with the city will miss one thing or another (I missed an explanation of the anomalous street numbers between 0 South, Roosevelt Road, Cermak, and 31st Street), but a handy size is in itself a merit, as entertaining reading material.

I can imagine sitting down and reading this book from cover to cover. I think that Heise and his colleague Mark Frazel managed to pick out the things that really, anyone who cares about the city should know. It's not a comprehensive work, as I say, nor is it a tour guide. What tour guide would talk about Panhandlers in the Loop as if they had as much right to be there as the Bums Upstairs? Well, maybe the kind of tour guide that Studs Terkel would use. Terkel wrote the Forward. And there's a back cover blurb from the late Mike Royko. How can you go wrong?

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

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Clothes of the Early Modern World
Christine Hatt
Manufacturer: Peter Bedrick
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0872266680

Book Description

Today, as in the earliest times, people wear clothes not only for warmth and comfort, but also to show their position in society or simply to look good and attract a partner.

Clothes of the Early Modern World looks at how fashions changed during the 300 years from the early 1500s to the late 1700s. This was a time when many important events, including industrial and political revolutions took place and these often affected what people wore. Stunning artwork recreates the styles of the time in Europe and the newly colonized United States, as well as clothing from other parts of the world, such as Persia and India.

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Clothes of the Early Modern World

Manufacturer: ANOVA (CHRYSALIS)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000H0C4RK

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