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
Watson spent his days at the Cavendish Laboratory studying TMV, or tobacco mosaic virus. He chose it because one of its main components was RNA, which is closely related to DNA. Before World War II, the crystallographers J.D. Bernal and I. Fankuchen had done interesting work on TMV’s structure, and they knew that it was made of many repeated subunits. By the 1950s, scientists knew that proteins could have lots of subunits, but RNA couldn’t. Therefore, Watson hypothesized that TMV was made of many identical protein subunits surrounding a core strand of RNA. A Nazi-funded German scientist had come to the same conclusion in 1944, but non-German scientists didn’t trust his data.
TMV offered a good middle ground between Watson’s previous research on viruses and his new interests in DNA and crystallography. (Of course, his fellowship money was also designated for TMV research.) Determining TMV’s structure would mean solving a similar problem to DNA’s structure with a similar set of tools. Of course, both projects also required him to understand and interpret other scientists’ data in light of later discoveries. For instance, he could interpret Bernal and Fankuchen’s images in the light of more recent advances in crystallography.
Themes
Watson eagerly showed Bernal and Fankuchen’s X-ray diffraction photo of TMV to Crick, who agreed that it appeared to have a helical structure. Watson started to theorize that TMV probably grows irregularly, like crystals, which means its shape is probably helical. Hugh Huxley gave him an X-ray camera and taught him to take diffraction images, and Roy Markham found him TMV samples to study. But it took Watson more than a month to get any reasonable pictures of TMV, and even then, he had a long way to go before he could see a helix. At least he attended a fun costume party around this time.
The helical structure of TMV was also an important similarity to DNA—it suggested that Watson’s research could indirectly prepare him to learn more about DNA. After all, while he clearly started to become more enthusiastic about TMV, he was still really thinking about DNA. His struggle against the X-ray camera helps explain why he and Crick were so attracted to theoretical research, as opposed to experimental research. Namely, experiments are far more time-consuming and labor-intensive than theory. Of course, theory still needs data to interpret, so someone has to conduct the experiments.
Themes
