More on Watson

Actually, I take some of that last post back. Tying in that old reference from Chargoff that everyone else had forgotten was pretty clever. Also, saying that Linus Pauling's three helix model was a bunch of BS took balls (I mean, seriously, he's Linus Pauling). I guess he did have several moments of important insight that took the biophysical and biochemical data to incorporate it into a coherent model. I guess I shouldn't necessarily undervalue the big picture thinking. (I think I tend to do that because I tend to see big picture more intuitively than little details, and I immediately assume that the little details are always undervalued because they are harder for me personally. I suppose there are other people who feel like it's the opposite.)

He also took back some of what he said about Rosalind Franklin:

Rosy showed Francis her data, and for the first time he was able to see how foolproof was her assertion that the sugar-phosphate backbone was on the outside of the molecule. Her past uncompromising statements on this matter thus reflected first-rate science, not the outpourings of a misguided feminist.

Obviously affecting Rosy's transformation [in regards to the acceptance of the double helix model, which she had previously vehemently opposed] was her appreciation that our past hooting about model building represented a serious approach to science, not the easy resort of slackers who wanted to avoid the hard work necessitated by an honest scientific career. It also became apart that Rosy's difficulties with Maurice and Randall were connected with her understandable need for being an equal to the people she worked with. Son after her entry to the King's lab, she ad rebelled against its hierarchical character, taking offense because her first-rate crystallographic ability was not given formal recognition.

...Since my initial impressions of her, both scientific and personal (as recorded in early pages of this book) were often wrong, I want to say something of her achievements. The X-ray work she did at King's is increasingly regarded as superb. The sorting out of A forms and B forms, by itself, would have made her reputation; even better was her 1952 demonstration using Patterson superposition methods, that the phosphate group must be on the outside of the DNA molecule...

...we both [he and Crick] came to appreciate her great personal honesty and generosity, realizing years too late the struggles that the intelligent woman faces to be accepted by a scientific world which often regards women as mere diversions from serious thinking. Rosalind's exemplary courage and integrity where apparent to all, when, knowing she was mortally ill, she did not complain but continued working on a high level until a few weeks before her death.

Still a sexist (the woman had to prove herself to not only be competent, but first-rate, to be taken at all seriously), but the memoir was also meant to be told to reflect how they went through the process of figuring out the structure of the double helix, and those were his first impressions of her.

Interesting fellow, even if he is a raging bigot.