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
After Maurice Wilkins arrived in the Cavendish Laboratory, he spent a long time silently studying Crick and Watson’s molecular model. Watson realized that if it weren’t for Jerry Donohue’s comment about the different forms of guanine and thymine, he never would have discovered the double helix structure. Next, Wilkins returned to London to check the model against his lab’s X-ray diffraction data. To Watson’s relief, Wilkins was excited, not bitter or resentful. Two days later, he called from London: based on their X-ray data, he and Rosalind Franklin strongly agreed with the double helix model. Everyone quickly made plans to publish their results.
Wilkins’s response to Crick and Watson’s discovery shows that he cared more about the advancement of DNA science in general than about his own personal career success. His sense of curiosity and wonder at this discovery was much stronger than his sense of pride. But Watson also recognized that this discovery was only possible because of numerous other scientists’ contributions. In fact, Wilkins and Franklin even made a significant contribution to it by checking Crick and Watson’s data.
Themes
Watson was especially surprised to hear that that Rosalind Franklin immediately accepted the new model, after resisting a helix structure for so long. Even more unexpectedly, when Crick and Watson visited London, Franklin began treating them with respect and sharing her data with them. Watson declares that she no longer sounded like “a misguided feminist.” He and Crick even started to understand Franklin’s frustration with Maurice Wilkins, who didn’t recognize her talent.
Franklin’s attitude and Watson’s feelings about her finally started to change—at last, they treat each other more or less as equals. But readers may view this as too little, too late. Clearly, Watson didn’t warm up to Franklin because his sexist ideas about women and feminism changed. Instead, he did so because Franklin finally respected and accepted his scientific work, so he no longer resented her. In fact, ironically enough, Watson could also empathize with Franklin based on his own past—most senior scientists (including Franklin) didn’t recognize the significance of Crick and Watson’s work for a very long time.
Themes
Crick and Watson also received two important letters about Linus Pauling. In the first, Max Delbrück reported that Pauling was still having serious trouble with his DNA models. Pauling himself wrote the second to ask about Crick and Watson’s new DNA structure. Watson realized that he told Delbrück about the earlier structure, which failed—so he was relieved to see his newer one succeed. The organic chemist Alexander Todd also visited and confirmed the sugar-phosphate backbone structure. Then, Watson left Cambridge for a week-long trip to Paris.
With Wilkins and Franklin’s approval, Crick and Watson were ready to spread news of their discovery to the U.S. Although Delbrück and Pauling didn’t know it yet, theirs letters essentially confirmed that Crick and Watson had won the race for DNA. But Watson also sees how lucky he was: if he hadn’t improved on the older, unsuccessful model that he actually presented to Delbrück in his letter, he would have had to admit that it was wrong. In other words, his discovery saved him from another round of embarrassing, public failure.
Themes
