by Jenifer Glynn, Oxford University Press, Ā£14.99/$27.95
MARIE CURIE is an unspoken presence in this touching but unsentimental memoir in which historian Jenifer Glynn tells the story of her older sister, physical chemist and molecular biologist Rosalind Franklin. Both Curie and Franklin enjoyed great family support and were drawn to French culture. Neither wanted to be held up as an example of a successful female scientist. Most significantly of all, perhaps, neither cared for the conventional rewards of science.
The controversy over Franklinās credit for her contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA has inspired many books, but Glynn offers fresh insight into her sisterās much-discussed life with family letters. In one, Franklin, newly arrived in Paris as a postgraduate researcher during a post-war, rationed winter, writes to her worried parents in London: āMy living conditions are extremely primitive compared with home ā though they might well be worse. I wash in a little tin bowl, the only water being from one cold tap in the kitchen at the other end of the flatā¦ I have practically no heatingā¦ but I would willingly go more primitive if it were necessary to preserve my freedom.ā This invites comparison with Curieās reflections on her own Paris student accommodation in her autobiography: āThis life, painful from certain points of view, had for all that, a real charm for me. It gave me a very precious sense of liberty and independence.ā
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Unlike Curie, however, Franklinās love of independence made her essentially a lone worker. Although she made a few close friends and relished debating scientific ideas with equals ā not least her friend Francis Crick ā she was never able to form the kind of argumentative collaboration that was so fruitful for Crick and James Watson. āRosalindās hates, as well as her friendships, tended to be enduring,ā her mother admitted. āShe was prickly,ā Glynn writes.
Franklin fell out miserably with her research supervisor Ronald Norrish when she was at the University of Cambridge, and her later clash with Kingās College London colleague Maurice Wilkins almost certainly deprived her of her rightful share of the credit for decoding the structure of DNA.
The science in this story gets its due with the help of Franklinās later colleague, chemist and biophysicist Aaron Klug, and physiologist Ian Glynn (the authorās husband). But it is the lively, atmospheric, personal details, uniquely known to Franklinās family, that make this book more substantial than its brevity would suggest.
