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
A week after the meeting with Maurice Wilkins, Francis Crick got into a furious argument with his bosses, Max Perutz and Sir Lawrence Bragg. Crick alleged that Perutz and Bragg used one of his ideas in their paper without crediting him. Fed up, Bragg threatened to fire Crick once he finished his PhD.
Crick’s fight with Bragg shows how his eccentric personality and constant flow of new ideas are actually a liability for his lab. But Crick’s grievance also points to the ethical importance of properly attributing original ideas to the people who created them and data to the people who collected them.
Themes
Watson notes that Bragg had a point: despite his brilliant ideas, Crick hadn’t produced any real scholarship. When World War II broke out, he was getting a PhD in physics, and he went off to research for the government. But after the war ended, he switched to biology. That’s how he ended up at the Cavendish Laboratory, 35 years old and without a PhD. Fortunately, Max Perutz and John Kendrew convinced Bragg to keep Crick on at the lab.
Crick couldn’t have taken a more different path than Watson (who was still underage during World War II and earned his PhD at just 22). In fact, Crick’s unconventional path put his entire academic career in peril. Watson clearly implies that Crick’s DNA research threatened to distract him from his doctoral work even further. Thus, Crick faced a difficult choice between pursuing a secure career and following his unusual interests.
Themes
