Brenda Maddox – Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA

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Biography, Book Review, Brenda Maddox, Francis Crick, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman

‘Crick and Watson’ are names drilled into my brain as the discoverers of the DNA double helix. I didn’t know until I read this book that there should have been a third name which I automatically associated with the structure of DNA – Rosalind Franklin.

Brenda Maddox has written, in some ways, a sadly familiar tale. We like to think that ‘science’ is Noble, Pure and Of High Ideals – the great god science may indeed be NP + OHI – however, scientists being mortal men and women (and more often than not, mortal men) are as subject to self-serving, naked ambition, power  hungry greed as the rest of us.

There’s a rush to get your name on the paper, to get the citations – and the desire for this is not just ‘this discovery is for the good of all’, but its good for ME.

The cut and thrust world of scientific fame and glory is particularly difficult, even now, for women.

Maddox uncovers a warts and all portrait of the difficult, often unlikeable, brilliant Franklin. Undoubtedly she lacked charm, she lacked the ability to schmooze, she lacked a graceful character (women of course are particularly ‘supposed’ to be charming, graceful and likeable) The naked ambition which was palpable (and par for the course) in her male colleagues is seen as unacceptable in a woman.

This book is a fascinating – and to a feminist -‘keep those flames of feminism burning’ -book. Maddox writes extremely well about the fascinating scientific journey of discovery, and about the dirty politics. She doesn’t turn Franklin into a latter day saint – but it is also clear that whatever her defects of character, being a brilliant woman, a brilliant Jewish woman, in a boys’ club, would never be an easy ride.

Brenda Maddox

And…………..if you feel tempted to think, ‘but that was a long long time ago’, read a
more recent account of the alpha male wolf pack atmosphere of big business, and the fierce cut and thrust of naked competition for the glory of getting the nobel prize for science in Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotion: Why You Feel the Way You Feel

Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, Amazon UK
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, Amazon USA

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Sara Maitland – A Book of Silence

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A Book of Silence, Book Review, Meditation, Philosophy, Reflection, Religion and Spirituality, Sara Maitland, The Natural World

Many words about silence – almost an oxymoron

This is a wonderful and thought provoking book. Maitland explores silence both from her personal experience, and from the garnered writings, sayings and teachings of others who have either sought silence, or had silence thrust upon them.

Inevitably, many of the chosen experiences of silence come from those who sought silence and or solitude (as she points out, the two are not necessarily the same) as the route towards an experience of the Divine. Maitland recognises that certain groups of people, while not seeking a closer union with divinity, may encounter experience of profound silence and contemplation – for example, explorers in inhospitable climes. She finds a common felt sense of silence across written accounts of these various experiences, although inevitably it seems that those who consciously search for the experience in spiritual surrender may travel further into the silence.

I was also fascinated by her drawing out the difference between the ‘eremitical tradition’ – hermits seeking surrender to Divinity and the tradition of solitude as ‘the way of the artist’, which was part of the Romantic tradition, and has influenced much modern thinking about individual artistic creation. She contrasts the surrender of the ego, the losing of boundary, the merging with all, that is the spiritual way, and the solitary act of artistic creativity which is the fuller realisation of ‘Self’ – if you like, the clearest realisation of the individual.

I would have liked a little more exploration of the journey towards inner silence – that quietening of the mind’s chatter – even if one is in a noiseless environment, and solitary, the full mind can often feel like a crowd of irritating noisy chattering fools! (well, mine can!) She touches more briefly on this, in the final chapter. it is perhaps a more difficult subject to write about anyway, since how can the wordless space be described? To describe it with words is to lose it.
Image: Deviant Art.com
A Book of Silence Amazon UK
A Book of Silence Amazon USA