A Twist Of Fate

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But of course DNA was an acid. Pauling, the world's greatest chemist, had made a mistake in basic chemistry--an unimaginable blooper. Watson and Crick retired to the Eagle to drink a toast to Pauling's failure. They were more nervous than ever, though. The paper was scheduled to be published in March; once it was out, someone would notice the error, and Pauling would work that much harder to vindicate himself. They had at most six weeks to figure out DNA.

Watson also knew he had to warn Wilkins and Franklin about Pauling's near miss. On Friday, Jan. 30, he went to London. Wilkins wasn't in his lab, so Watson dropped in on Franklin. What happened next--from Watson's point of view, at least--was recorded in great detail in The Double Helix. The passage shows how formidable Franklin could be but also demonstrates Watson's adolescent delight in needling her. He tried to engage Franklin in debate about the idea that DNA was helical, which she still insisted was unsupported by evidence. "Rosy by then was hardly able to control her temper," he writes, "and her voice rose as she told me that the stupidity of my remarks would be obvious if I would stop blubbering and look at her X-ray evidence.

"I decided to risk a full explosion," he continues. "Without further hesitation I implied that she was incompetent in interpreting X-ray pictures. If only she would learn some theory, she would understand how her supposed antihelical features arose from the minor distortions needed to pack regular helices into a crystalline lattice." The explosion occurred. "Suddenly, Rosy came from behind the lab bench that separated us and began moving toward me. Fearing that in her hot anger she might strike me, I grabbed up the Pauling manuscript and hastily retreated toward the open door. My escape was blocked by Maurice [Wilkins], who, searching for me, had just then stuck his head through." Franklin shut the door on both men. "Walking down the passage," Watson continues, "I told Maurice how his unexpected appearance might have prevented Rosy from assaulting me. Slowly he assured me that this very well might have happened. Some months earlier she had made a similar lunge toward him."

United in their belief that Rosy was impossible--there's no evidence that either man felt he had contributed to her reaction--Watson and Wilkins began chatting. "Now that I need no longer merely imagine the emotional hell he had faced during the past two years," writes Watson, "he could treat me almost as a fellow collaborator rather than as a distant acquaintance." In the course of that conversation, Wilkins trotted out one of Franklin's images of the B form of DNA. Labeled Photograph 51, it was her best--and, writes Watson, "the instant I saw the picture my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race. The pattern was unbelievably simpler than those obtained previously. Moreover, the black cross of reflections which dominated the picture could arise only from a helical structure."