The Double Helix

Lore & Background

The Double Helix has earned both critical and public praise, along with continuing controversy about credit for the Nobel award and attitudes towards female scientists at the time of the discovery. Originally slated to be published by Harvard University Press, Watson's home university, Harvard dropped the arrangement after protestations from Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, co-discoverers of the structure of DNA. It was published instead by Atheneum in the United States and Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK. The intimate first-person memoir about scientific discovery was unusual for its time. The book has been hailed for its highly personal view of scientific work, and has been criticized as caring only about the glory of priority, with critics claiming that Watson was willing to appropriate data from others surreptitiously in order to obtain it. It has also been criticized as being disagreeably sexist towards Rosalind Franklin, another participant in the discovery, who was deceased by the time Watson's book was written.

Reader's Guide

The Double Helix remains significant as a controversial account of one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century. The book's legacy is intertwined with ongoing debates about credit for the Nobel award and the treatment of Rosalind Franklin. Anne Sayre's book Rosalind Franklin and DNA is very critical of Watson's account, claiming it did not give a balanced description of Franklin and the nature of her interactions with Maurice Wilkins. Sayre's book raises doubts about the ethics of how Watson and Crick used some of Franklin's results and whether adequate credit was given to her. In the book's preface, Watson explains that he is describing his impressions at the time of the events, and not at the time he wrote the book. In the epilogue, Watson writes that his initial impressions about Franklin were often wrong and acknowledges the enormous barriers she faced as a woman in science.

Did You Know?

• Harvard University Press dropped the original publication arrangement after protestations from Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins.
• The book was adapted as a BBC television docudrama called Life Story (known as The Race for the Double Helix in the U.S.).