Biologists, real and fictional, were my teenage heroes: the erudite and witty essayist Stephen Jay Gould; Doc, the bohemian marine biologist in John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row; and James Watson, whose Double Helix portrayed the discovery of the structure of DNA as inspired detective work.
Combined with the BBC drama Life Story, with a manic Jeff Goldblum playing Watson, it made biology seem impossibly exciting.
Several years later I re-read The Double Helix, but from the perspective of a historian of science (this was after a year spent working in a proper laboratory, where I discovered that Doc was not a good role model in all kinds of ways).
Now I saw it differently. It was not just the self-aggrandising tone and churlish dismissal of the contribution made by Rosalind Franklin – of it being “bad history” in need of correction – but rather the sense of the book itself being part of the story.
The copy on my desk now is a new edition, richly illustrated with material drawn from Watson’s archive and other sources.
Over the last three years we’ve been working to digitise some of these collections – not just Watson’s archive, but those of Franklin, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and other individuals and organisations responsible for shaping modern genetics.
In total, we’ll be making about 1.5 million pages of books and archives freely available online this year – a chance for everyone to see the raw material of history.
Simon Chaplin is the head of the Wellcome Library, London
Combined with the BBC drama Life Story, with a manic Jeff Goldblum playing Watson, it made biology seem impossibly exciting.
Several years later I re-read The Double Helix, but from the perspective of a historian of science (this was after a year spent working in a proper laboratory, where I discovered that Doc was not a good role model in all kinds of ways).
Now I saw it differently. It was not just the self-aggrandising tone and churlish dismissal of the contribution made by Rosalind Franklin – of it being “bad history” in need of correction – but rather the sense of the book itself being part of the story.
The copy on my desk now is a new edition, richly illustrated with material drawn from Watson’s archive and other sources.
Over the last three years we’ve been working to digitise some of these collections – not just Watson’s archive, but those of Franklin, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and other individuals and organisations responsible for shaping modern genetics.
In total, we’ll be making about 1.5 million pages of books and archives freely available online this year – a chance for everyone to see the raw material of history.
Simon Chaplin is the head of the Wellcome Library, London
