Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Double Helix, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Research, Adventure, and the Thrill of Discovery
Scientific Collaboration, Competition, and Community
DNA and the Secret of Life
Academic Life and the University
Summary
Analysis
The morning after Rosalind Franklin’s talk, Watson met Crick at the train station. They were heading to Oxford, where Crick wanted to explain his and Bill Cochran’s new theory to the crystallographer Dorothy Hodgkin. On the train, Crick asked Watson all about Rosalind Franklin’s talk—but Watson didn’t remember many important details. He comments that Crick probably should have gone to Franklin’s talk instead of him, even if Crick’s interest in the subject might have bothered Maurice Wilkins. Watson notes that while Wilkins deserved the first shot at analyzing Franklin’s data to figure out DNA’s structure, he was still trying to do it through crystallography alone. In contrast, Crick and Watson wanted to use molecular models, like Linus Pauling.
Crick’s meeting with Dorothy Hodgkin shows that, despite his inexperience and slow progress on his dissertation, he was still making significant scientific discoveries. Watson recognized this: he admitted that he didn’t understand much of Rosalind Franklin’s talk and that Crick was far more advanced than him at crystallography. Meanwhile, Watson and Crick continued to struggle with the ethical implications of doing similar research to Franklin and Wilkins. At what point, they ask, does collaboration turn into theft? Would they be able to make discoveries that Wilkins and Franklin never would, because they weren’t willing to use molecular models? Arguably, Watson and Crick succeeded because, as newcomers, they were actually willing to try new, innovative techniques that more established scientists would reject.
Themes
On the train, Crick had a flash of insight and started scribbling away on scratch paper. He pointed out that if Rosalind Franklin’s data was right, but so was his and Bill Cochran’s theory, then there were only a few options for DNA structure: it had to have either two, three, or four strands. Crick thought they were already close to a solution. This would be a great win for Cambridge—after all, everyone (especially Sir Lawrence Bragg) felt humiliated by Linus Pauling’s recent success.
Right on the heels of one discovery, Crick immediately began chasing another. Again, his central motivation was sheer curiosity—and the license to follow this curiosity is clearly what Watson considers so extraordinary about a scientist’s life. However, Watson acknowledges that competition and pride also motivated Crick—and everyone else in their lab. As always, there was a fine line between collaboration and competition in the scientific community. For instance, even as he hoped to beat other people to the structure of DNA, Crick was still relying on those people’s research (namely, Franklin’s experimental data).
Themes
Based on Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray diffraction data, Crick and Watson quickly concluded that “the sugar-phosphate backbone was in the center of the [DNA] molecule.” However, they still had to figure out how the nitrogenous bases could both have an irregular sequence and face outward. Moreover, they had to figure out what positive charges neutralized the negative charges in the molecule’s sugar-phosphate backbone. The expert on this latter topic was none other than Linus Pauling, so when they arrived in Oxford, Crick and Watson quickly bought and read a copy of Pauling’s book The Nature of the Chemical Bond.
Readers might find this sudden rush of molecular biology concepts overwhelming. Of course, by presenting them in this way, Watson also replicates the feeling of his and Crick’s rush of theoretical insights. To understand Crick and Watson’s conclusions, it’s essential to know that DNA is made up of nucleotides, which are compounds with three components: nitrogenous bases, a phosphate group, and a sugar. Crick and Watson believed that the sugar and phosphate group form a chain, or backbone, that simply holds the DNA molecule together. Meanwhile, they believed that the nitrogenous bases (generally coded as A, T, C, and G) carry genetic information, depending on their order in any given strand of DNA. These assumptions weren’t just shots in the dark: they were based on experimental evidence that revealed the different components of DNA. While other scientists didn’t necessarily agree with them, they ended up being correct. Based on these assumptions, Crick and Watson then asked how the sugar-phosphate backbone and nitrogenous bases were oriented toward one another. But at this point, they were making educated guesses based on their knowledge of chemistry. Their recourse to Linus Pauling’s book shows that they were not nearly as knowledgeable about this topic as their rivals.
Themes
It was time for Watson and Crick’s meeting with Dorothy Hodgkin, so they temporarily put the mystery of DNA aside. At the meeting, Crick explained his and Bill Cochran’s results, and then Hodgkin discussed her work on insulin. Next, Crick and Watson met their friends Avrion Mitchison, Leslie Orgel, and George Kriesel for tea and dinner.
Crick and Watson got to spend their lives alternating between their two great passions: intense scientific work and casual socializing. Of course, these two weren’t totally distinct—their scientific work was collaborative, and they mostly talked about science when they socialized.
Themes
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