The Double Helix Characters

John Kendrew was a Nobel Prize-winning crystallographer and biochemist who was also Max Perutz’s main research partner at the Cavendish Laboratory. He was one of Watson’s most important mentors at Cambridge. In fact, Watson lived with Kendrew and his wife Elizabeth throughout his time there.

Salvador Luria was the Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist and phage researcher who supervised Watson’s thesis. During Watson’s time in Europe, Luria helped him find research funding and connect with other scientists. The U.S. government also banned him from international travel for his peace activism.

Bernal and Fankuchen were crystallographers who conducted important X-ray diffraction experiments on tobacco mosaic virus (TMV).

Odile Crick was Francis Crick’s wife and an internationally renowned artist. Watson portrays her as loving, conventional, and ignorant about science—but also suggests that this is how scientists’ wives ought to be.

Bill Cochran was a Scottish crystallographer who worked at the Cavendish Laboratory. He and Francis Crick developed an innovative new method to study helical molecules through X-ray diffraction. This method helped Crick and Watson interpret Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray data and identify that DNA is helical.

Bertrand Fourcade was an attractive, popular French exchange student who dated Watson’s sister Elizabeth.

Raymond George (R.G.) Gosling was a graduate student who worked under Rosalind Franklin in the lab that she and Maurice Wilkins shared at King’s College London.

John Griffith was a theoretical chemist and friend of Francis Crick at Cambridge. His calculations showed Crick and Watson that adenine could bond with thymine and guanine could bond with cytosine.

Bill Hayes was an Irish geneticist who studied bacterial mating during Watson and Crick’s time at Cambridge.

Dorothy Hodgkin was a Nobel Prize-winning chemist and pioneering crystallographer at Oxford.

Hugh Huxley was Francis Crick’s close friend and John Kendrew’s graduate student. He studied muscle fibers and taught Watson how to do X-ray diffraction experiments.

Ole Maaløe was a Danish phage researcher with whom Watson worked extensively during his time in Copenhagen (although he was supposed to be working under Herman Kalckar instead).

Roy Markham was a biochemist at Cambridge who specialized in studying plant viruses. He helped Watson get his fellowship transferred to Cambridge and supervised some of Watson’s work on TMV.

Avrion Mitchison was one of Crick and Watson’s friends at Cambridge. He invited Watson to his family home in Scotland one Christmas. In fact, a decade later, Watson also wrote most of this book at Mitchison’s house.