James Watson's The Double Helix: A Review

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Franklin (also known as Rosy).
Initially, Wilkins thought that Rosy was supposed to be his assistant in
researching the structure of DNA because of her expertise in crystallography;
however, Rosy did not want to be thought of as anybody's assistant and let her
feelings be known to others. Throughout the book there is a drama between
Wilkins and Rosy, a drama for the struggle of power between the two.
Watson's "adventure" begins when he receives a grant to leave the United
States and go to Copenhagen to do his postdoctoral work with a biochemist named
Herman Kalckar. Watson found that studying biochemistry was not as exciting as
he hoped it would be; fortunately, he met up with Ole Maaloe, another scientist
doing research on phages (Watson studied phages intensively while in graduate
school). He found himself helping Ole with many of his experiments and soon he
was helping Ole with his experiments more than he was helping Herman with his
experiments. At first, Watson felt ...

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scientist out of Cal Tech. Pauling had partly solved the structure
of proteins. He discovered that proteins have an alpha-helical shape. Watson
thought this was an incredible discovery! He was excited to research and learn
about the DNA structure.
Watson was worried about where he could learn more about DNA and how to
solve X- ray diffraction pictures so the structure of DNA could be understood.
He knew he could not do this at Cal Tech with Pauling because Pauling was too
great a man to waste time with Watson and Wilkins continually put Watson off.
Soon Watson became aware that Cambridge was the place he could get experience to
solve the DNA problem. It was about this time that ...

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