504 4 FEBRUARY 2022 • VOL 375 ISSUE 6580 science.org SCIENCEPHOTO: UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY IMAGESByKatie LanginI
n Her Hidden Genius, author Marie Bene-
dict transports readers to another time:
Europe is rebuilding after World War II,
the shock of the Holocaust reverberates,
food rationing abounds. But the story’s
central struggles will feel all too familiar
to anyone who has set foot in a modern sci-
entific laboratory, as much of the action takes
place in research environments beset with
bullying, competition, and sexism.
The novel centers on a brilliant scientist
who died far too young: Rosalind
Franklin. Benedict has made a ca-
reer out of writing novels about
historically important women, pro-
filing such figures as physicist Mileva
Maric ́, novelist Agatha Christie, and
librarian Belle da Costa Greene. She
bases her fictionalized narratives on
what is known about each woman,
painting a picture of their lives with
invented scenes and dialogue.
We meet Franklin on the streets of
Paris as she walks to her first day of
work at the Laboratoire Central des
Services Chimiques. The 26-year-old,
who received her PhD from the Uni-
versity of Cambridge 2 years earlier,
is greeted warmly by lab members—a
welcome change from her experience
in England. In the months that fol-
low, she learns x-ray crystallography,
a technique that can be used to visu-
alize the molecular structure of many
substances, and becomes a star of
the lab, known for her experimental
prowess and technical skill, which
she uses to study graphite.
Four years later, she leaves the
Paris lab and accepts a position at
King’s College London. “I worry that I’ve
made the wrong choice,” Benedict’s Franklin
remarks. She loves Paris and the lab in which
she works, but she is drawn back to England,
in part to be closer to her family—an upper-
class Jewish clan with deep roots in London.
It is a career decision that proves pivotal.
On the first day in her new lab, Franklin
learns that she is to use her x-ray crystal-
lography skills to decipher the structure ofDNA. A physical scientist by training, she
balks at first, responding, “Pardon?...Not
crystalline substances?” But she quickly
dives headfirst into the task, working long
hours to generate images of DNA with un-
precedented clarity. The helical structure
of DNA begins to become apparent, but
Franklin and her assistant, Raymond Gos-
ling, keep the details of their discoveries
largely secret while they work to amass an
unimpeachable body of evidence.
Meanwhile, a pair of young scientists
at the University of Cambridge—FrancisCrick and James Watson—enter the race to
describe the structure of DNA and begin
working on a theoretical model. Franklin
rejects their first attempt, which featured
phosphate groups on the inside of the DNA
strand and bases on the outside, declar-
ing it scientifically impossible. But they
eventually get it right, aided by Franklin’s
images and data, which were slipped to
them without her knowledge or permis-
sion. (Maurice Wilkins, a King’s College
colleague who had befriended Crick and
Watson, is a prime suspect.)The book ends with Franklin, aged 37, on
her deathbed. She was diagnosed with ovar-
ian cancer a year and a half earlier while
doing pioneering work on RNA viruses at
Birkbeck College. She continued that work
while undergoing treatment, at one point
believing she had been cured. “Science has
taken care of me. As it always has,” she de-
clares. But the cancer comes back, and she
dies in London on 16 April 1958.
Much of this tale will be familiar to sci-
entific readers, but in Benedict’s telling,
Franklin’s struggles come alive. She engages
in fierce disputes with Wilkins, who
eventually wins the Nobel Prize,
along with Watson and Crick, for his
work visualizing DNA. She misses
important networking opportunities,
in part because King’s College has a
men-only dining area. She is repeat-
edly referred to as “Miss Franklin”
instead of “Dr. Franklin”—an annoy-
ance that will likely resonate with
many women scientists today. And
she bristles at the nickname “Rosy,”
which Watson, Crick, and Wilkins
use behind her back. (Watson was
criticized for using this nickname in
his 1968 book The Double Helix.)
Throughout the book, I found
myself wondering whether certain
conversations and events were
based in fact or whether they were
products of Benedict’s imagination,
which led me to scour nonfiction
sources for further information
about Franklin. Readers who find
themselves in a similar situation
might choose to read as a compan-
ion Brenda Maddox’s biography
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady
of DNA, which Benedict consulted
during her research for this novel.
Overall, Benedict’s retelling of Franklin’s
story offers a compelling look at the scien-
tist’s impressive and all-too-short life. It also
raises broader questions about the scientific
enterprise: Are conditions much better for
women scientists today? Does academia’s
first-to-publish reward system pervert the
process of science? Who deserves credit for
a scientific discovery? There are no easy
answers in Her Hidden Genius, but there is
much food for thought. j
10.1126/science.abn2940SCIENCE LIVESImagining Rosalind Franklin
The crystallographer’s story comes alive in a work
of historical fiction
Her Hidden Genius:
A Novel
Marie Benedict
Sourcebooks
Landmark, 2022.
304 pp.INSIGHTS | BOOKSThe reviewer is an associate editor at Science, Washington,
DC 20005, USA. Email: [email protected]Franklin examines a sample with a microscope in 1955.