Rosalind Franklin

Archival Summary & Scope

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Science and Technology).

Brenda Maddox's acclaimed biography meticulously unearths the true story of Rosalind Franklin, the brilliant scientist whose critical X-ray data was foundational to Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA's structure. Despite her pivotal contributions, Franklin was excluded from the 1962 Nobel Prize and her role largely forgotten, only to be caricatured in *The Double Helix*. Hailed as "meticulous" (*The Economist*) and "even-handed" (*Washington Post*), Maddox presents a full, balanced portrait of this "unacknowledged heroine of DNA." What emerges is a complex, engaging story of a passionate, forthright scientist airbrushed from one of the twentieth century's greatest scientific breakthroughs.