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 few days after Crick’s explosive argument with Sir Lawrence Bragg, the crystallographer V. Vand wrote Max Perutz to explain his new theory of how to use X-ray diffraction to study helices. Crick and his colleague Bill Cochran immediately noticed errors in Vand’s theory, so they tried to correct it. Later that day, Crick figured out the solution while sitting home by the fireplace.
Vand’s crystallography theory had clear applications to DNA: if X-ray diffraction could identify helices, then Crick and Watson could use it to prove that DNA was a helix. Crick corrected Vand’s theory during his time off in the evening, which reveals his brilliance and shows that he was always obsessively following his curiosity about science—even if he couldn’t focus that curiosity toward his thesis research.
Themes
Crick lived in a cramped but cozy apartment with his second wife, Odile, who shared his disdain for the middle class, politics, and religion. She was also a great cook, which Watson attributes to her French mother, and she didn’t mind that her husband constantly chased other, younger women.
Crick’s quaint home life with Odile clearly fit his unusual personality and interests. Watson views this as the truly extraordinary part about academic life: scholars get to fully immerse themselves in their ideas and research, without stooping down to the level of ordinary middle-class preoccupations. But Crick’s intellectual freedom is inseparably tied to Odile’s role as a housewife whose social life is entirely dependent on her husband’s. This raises an important question: when scholarly life is only possible because of other people’s labor, can those other people ever be as free as the scholars they support?
Themes
The afternoon after Crick’s discovery, he and Odile went to a wine tasting, but unfortunately there were no younger women there. The next morning, he learned that Bill Cochran found the same solution as he did, but in a more elegant way. Delighted, they quickly published their results, then sent a copy to Linus Pauling.
Crick and Cochran’s improvement on Vand’s theory also shows that science is a cumulative, collaborative process. In other words, scientists make progress by working together, integrating their ideas, and checking one another’s data and hypotheses.
Themes
