REMEMBERING ROSALIND FRANKLIN

A profile of the underrecognized DNA researcher whose work sparked Crick and Watson’s breakthrough.

“This true story doesn’t really have a happy ending,” Stone warns—after dedicating the book to “anyone who did something awesome and didn’t feel the love.” In recent years, Rosalind Franklin’s role in revealing DNA’s helical structure has come to be readily acknowledged…but it wasn’t at the time. Along with noting the fishy way her famous “Photo 51” came into Crick and Watson’s possession, the author offers several condescending quotes from Watson’s 1968 memoir along the lines of “she was not unattractive” and “there was no denying she had a good brain.” Ouch. Counterintuitively, considering the infuriating injustice here, Powers echoes the narrative’s informal, almost detached tone with illustrations more restrained than angry; her subject bears delicate features and a distant, abstracted gaze, and the artist relies on misty, pale hues and softly rounded forms. Whatever their reaction to what the author pegs in her afterword as an archetypal case study in the Matilda effect (men taking credit for women’s work), readers will come away with a clear understanding of Franklin’s contributions, as well as her distinctive scientific skills and background.

A warmly appreciative tribute to a renowned scientist.