"Rosalind: DNA's Invisible Woman," to be released in paperback for Women's History Month this March
Added: (Mon Mar 14 2022)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
The hotly anticipated debut novel from former WSJ Pro editor Jessica Mills Davies tells the true story of British chemist Rosalind Franklin
London, United Kingdom Mar 14, 2022 - Rosalind: DNA's Invisible Woman
'ROSALIND: DNA'S INVISIBLE WOMAN,' the debut novel from journalist and former WSJ Pro editor Jessica Mills Davies, goes on sale in paperback this month. It will be released during this year’s Women’s History Month, in March 2022 (shortly after International Women’s Day).
The book takes an unflinching look at how and why women's work has historically been ignored or credited to men, tackling the Matilda Effect head-on. Based on the true story of British chemist Rosalind Franklin, and peppered with original correspondence from her contemporaries, the novel tells how three men got away with the biggest heist in scientific history. (Hint: It wasn't because, as widely slandered, she was 'difficult', or ‘obsessive’.)
During a 15-year career in journalism, the author saw first-hand how women's bylines were often in the minority on the front pages. Shockingly, just 6% of Nobel awards in more than a century have been granted to women, with even fewer given to ethnic minority scientists.
The author's aim was to start a discussion about how and why women are rarely credited, and, vitally, what we can do to fix it.
Rosalind Franklin's Nobel Award Dashed by a Single Word
Just one word sealed Rosalind Franklin’s fate as the wronged heroine of history.
In his nomination support letter to the Nobel prize committee in 1960, Linus Pauling, a professor at the California Institute of Technology, wrongly attributed the DNA photographs, taken by Franklin and her Ph.D. student Raymond Gosling, to their colleague Maurice Wilkins at King's College London. Wilkins was subsequently awarded a Nobel for the discovery of the structure of DNA alongside two other men at a rival lab in Cambridge, James Watson, and Francis Crick, in 1962.
"Watson and Crick had a manuscript of this paper [the alpha helix theory of keratin produced by Pauling’s lab] before publication, and may to some extent have been stimulated by this proposal to formulate their double-helix structure, as well as by the x-ray photographs of Wilkins," Pauling said in his letter supporting a nomination from the Cavendish lab’s head to the Nobel Committee. His lab also competed in the race to discover DNA’s structure.
Pauling had earlier written to the head of the lab at King’s College London, John Randall, asking to see the photographic X-ray data collected by Franklin, a request that was promptly rejected.
Pauling's own Nobel nomination for the alpha helix in 1954 was thrown into doubt when Herman Branson, a black scientist seconded to his lab, accused him of plagiarising the alpha and gamma helices theories. If the Nobel Committee had asked another Nobel laureate, Dorothy Hodgkin, who had helped Franklin to work out the space grouping of DNA in 1952, then the result of the nominations may have been very different.
“Rosalind Was A Much Better Experimenter Than Wilkins”
James Watson confessed in his autobiography the Double Helix that his inspiration for the eponymous theory came after seeing Franklin’s X-ray photograph, which was shown to him without her permission by Wilkins, in early 1953.
By the time Watson and Crick announced they would be publishing their theory in Nature that spring, Franklin had already written a paper outlining her evidence for a ‘two-chain’ helix. Their papers were published concurrently in April 1953. Hers had all the proof.
“It's true, Rosalind was a much better experimenter than Wilkins was, so she advanced the work very, very importantly,” Professor Jack Dunitz, a former researcher in Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin’s laboratory, said in an exclusive interview with the author conducted for the book in 2019. He said Franklin’s “report was given to [William] Bragg”, the head of the Cavendish laboratory where James Watson and Francis Crick worked, who he said: “Showed it to Perutz [Crick’s thesis tutor] who showed it to Francis.”
“Francis immediately saw the helix,” he added.
Professor Dunitz explained that in 1952, the year that Franklin took the now infamous X-rays of the double helix including ‘photograph 51’ from the 51st experiment, Watson and the team at the Cavendish Lab were lagging behind: “I remember [James] Watson came six months later towards the end of '52 and at that time they had not yet had their famous letter from Pauling and he was a bit depressed about the slowness and not getting anywhere. I told him, ‘Well Jim, it's a hard job. If your finger hurts, go and do something else. Find another problem.’”
Synopsis & Praise:
"A luminous, pin-sharp portrait of a true trailblazer. Mills's writing simply glows." Zoë Howe, Author, Artist, and RLF Writing Fellow at Newnham College, University of Cambridge
The Exeter Novel Prize-longlisted novel tells the true story of the woman who discovered the structure of DNA, only for three men to win a Nobel prize for the discovery
Driven by faith in science, Rosalind Franklin persists with her education in the face of formidable obstacles, including the de-reservation of women from war science. Her story is one of hope, perseverance, love, and betrayal. In Norway at the start of World War II, her place at Cambridge's first women's college is thrown into jeopardy, and her father urges her to join the Land Army like her aunt.
A decade later, a professor in London switches her subject to DNA at the last minute. What importance does DNA have in the scheme of life? Before she can start the work she must complete her Paris paper and she writes to the research director of the State Chemicals Lab to ask if he will be named. She left Paris upon news of his affair, but they continue to write to each other in secret.
She knew when embarking on science, a gentleman's profession, that the odds would be stacked against a woman's success, but she hadn't foreseen her pay being cut on account of her age and gender, a battle with cancer, or the plagiarism that is rife among her male contemporaries.
Can she discover DNA's structure, and will the discovery ultimately be worth it?
Within weeks of joining the physics lab at King's College London, the sonorous Maurice Wilkins returns from holiday and treats her as his new lab assistant. When his friends at her alma mater Cambridge University announce that they have built a three-chain model of DNA, just weeks after seeing her lecture, she immediately sees that it is wrong.
Everyone else thinks DNA has three chains. Her evidence proves otherwise. But will anyone listen?
This is the story of DNA that you won't find in history books...
The woman behind science's greatest discovery has been variously referred to as 'an obsessive woman', 'difficult', and 'the dark lady of DNA'. Why was she called these names, and were they justified?
Written by former Wall Street Journal (PRO) editor Jessica Mills Davies, following nearly three years of intensive archival research, the novel aims to give Rosalind Franklin a voice for the first time in history. Her story is the most well-documented account of 'the Matilda effect' and its corollary 'the Matthew Effect', whereby women's contributions to science and other professions are often ignored or worse, misappropriated.
The book is peppered with copies of original correspondence between her and her contemporaries, illustrating how three men got away with the biggest heist in scientific history.
Link to the book listing on Amazon: amzn.to/3tz5Tbr
Author page: www.jessiemillsauthor.com
@byjessiemills (Twitter)
@jessiemillsauthor (Insta)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cogitoergosumjj/ (LinkedIn)