by Monoceros
Done. For now. (19 December 2004)
Dramatis Personae
Leona "the Lioness" Pauling - American; professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology; awarded Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine and in Peace, 1962. Lion.
Sir William Lawrence Bragg - Australian; awarded Nobel Prize in Physics, 1915; the inventor of X-ray crystallography and the head of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Thylacine.
John Kendrew - British; Ph.D. chemist in the Medical Research Council Unit of the Cavendish Laboratory; awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1962. Fox.
Francis Crick - British; graduate student in physics at the Cavendish under John Kendrew. Human.
James Watson - American; Ph.D. biologist at the Cavendish under John Kendrew. Human.
Maurice Wilkins - New Zealander; Ph.D. physicist in the Biophysics Research Unit at King's College, London. Squirrel.
Rosalind Franklin - British; Ph.D. physical chemist and X-ray crystallographer at King's College; awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1962. Wolf.
Raymond Gosling - British; graduate student in physics at King's College under Rosalind Franklin; awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1962. Human.
Robert Corey - American; professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology; awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1962. Deer.
Verner Schomaker - American; Ph.D. chemist and X-ray crystallographer at the California Institute of Technology. Raccoon.
Peter Pauling - American; graduate student in chemistry and son of Leona Pauling. Lion.
Richard Feynman - American; professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology. Fox.
Jonas Salk - American; founder of the Salk Institute of Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA. Horse.
11 October 1962, The California Institute of Technology
nine p.m.
"Congratulations again, Professor Pauling."
The main dining room in the Athenaeum was thinning out now. The speeches had been made, the toasts proposed, and now the scientists and guests in attendance were either trickling away or leaning back placidly to digest their meals.
"Thank you, Dr. Feynman. I'm flattered that a theoretical physicist of your caliber has kind words for a mere chemist."
Feynman's eyes twinkled mischievously from his lean, red face. "Oh, don't worry, Lioness, we physicists are going to put you chemists and biologists out of business some day. Aren't we, Dr. Franklin?"
Rosalind Franklin nodded solemnly. "Indeed we are, Dr. Feynman. I am confident that one day we shall be able to give biology the same systematic, theoretical basis that now supports physical chemistry."
"Perhaps you're right, Rosalind," said Pauling with a grin. "But in the meantime we unsystematic, untheoretical chemists have quite a bit more work to do, I suspect. And you have to admit that Bob here, at least, hasn't an unsystematic bone in his body. Do you, Bob?"
Robert Corey, embarrassed, lowered his head.
"Oh, Bob, no need to be shy. Richard, don't worry. I'm sure you'll join our club soon. We've got an office pool going in the Chemistry department and you're the odds-on favourite to win the Prize before Gell-Mann does."
"Lioness! The very thought of the jaguar trouncing the fox! I don't even want to think about it."
"Don't worry, Richard, it's fifteen to one against the jaguar at the moment."
"That's more like it. Lioness, I'm afraid it's time for me to slink off. Dr. Corey, Dr. Franklin, my congratulations as well. Good night, ladies and gentlefur." Feynman winked, cut an exaggerated bow, and scampered away.
"What a character," said Pauling. "Sometimes it's hard to believe he's one of the biggest brains on campus, isn't it, Rosalind?" Pauling's voice changed. "Rosalind? Are you all right?"
Franklin stood up from her chair. She swayed a little in weariness. "I fear, Leona, that I must be on my way. I - well, you know how easily I fatigue now. And my appetite is not what it used to be."
Concern filled Pauling's face. "Are you still in remission?"
"Yes, I am. But eighteen months of treatment with radiation and alkylating agents leaves a mark." Franklin leaned against the back of her chair.
"At least your fur has started growing out," Pauling said, trying to cheer her friend up.
Franklin smiled slightly. "That it has. It is pleasant to be capable of appearing in polite society again. But I should be thankful that I can even walk. I owe much to you, Leona. Your recommendation of ascorbic acid - you know how sceptical I was at first."
"I expect no less from you, Rosalind. Good night and get your rest."
"Good night, Leona." Franklin walked out of the dining room.
"Poor Rosalind," Pauling said, bowing her head. "I hope the day comes when nobody will have to go through with what she's endured."
"She would have been dead years ago but for you, Leona."
"Perhaps, perhaps." Pauling fell silent and looked down at her plate.
"Professor Pauling?"
Pauling started from her reverie and looked up to see a small, bespectacled fur standing close at hand. Recognition dawned and Pauling jumped up to shake the visitor's hand.
"You're Dr. Jonas Salk, aren't you? From San Diego?"
"Lately of San Diego," replied Salk with a wry smile. "I'm flattered that you recognise me, Prof. Pauling. It's an honour to meet you in person."
"No, Dr. Salk, the honour is ours. You have done the world a greater service than mine and I'm sure that Bob here would agree with me wholeheartedly."
"Indeed I would, Dr. Salk. That humans and furs alike need not suffer any longer from the disease that afflicted me heartens me profoundly."
"Thank you, Dr. Corey. But you underrate yourself, Dr. Pauling. I've long admired your commitment to nuclear disarmament. Winning the Peace prize as well as that for Physiology - that is an unequalled achievement. But I must confess," Salk went on, "that I've approach you not only to congratulate you. Perhaps you have heard that I am establishing a biological research institute in La Jolla?"
"Yes, I have, Dr. Salk. You're still amassing your research fellows, aren't you?"
"I have. In particular, John Kendrew at the Cavendish Institute has expressed interest in joining us. You know him, I believe?"
"I certainly do. I'm glad to see that his and Max Perutz's years of work on haemoglobin and myoglobin have finally been rewarded. He'll be an excellent addition to your faculty."
"In any case, Dr. Pauling, Kendrew told me something rather interesting when I last spoke to him. He said that two humans who used to work with him, a graduate student named Francis Crick and a young American biologist, James Watson, had been keen to discover the structure of DNA at about the same time you were. I was especially surprised when he said that your son Peter had worked with them for a time as well. Were you familiar at all with what Crick and Watson were doing?"
Pauling blinked once or twice. "No, I wasn't. They were working on DNA?"
"It seems so. Did you ever meet either of them?"
"No, I'm afraid I didn't. While in England I visited the Cavendish of course to see my son and while I was there I met some of scientists Peter was working with but neither Crick and Watson were there. Kendrew did tell me something of them, though; they were helping him and Perutz with their protein work. He never said anything about DNA."
"Apparently it was something Watson and Crick were doing on their own hook. Did your son mention anything about it?"
"Not that I recall. But you must remember, Dr. Salk, that Peter was unfortunately a bit of a wild animal back then and his attention was not often on science."
Salk chuckled. "That I can understand."
"Dr. Salk, did Kendrew say anything to you about what happened to Watson and Crick?"
"Well, that's just it. Just after you and Dr. Franklin announced your discovery Watson and Crick abruptly quit the Cavendish, almost without explanation. Crick returned to London and went back into physics; he's published but nothing too memorable. Watson practically disappeared. He came back to the States, jumped from one research institute to another, and from what I've found out he's distinguished only by his inability to keep a job. Don't you think their sudden departure's an odd coincidence, Prof. Pauling?"
"It is curious, Dr. Salk, but it doesn't seem terribly important. And if they were dabbling in DNA without permission maybe they ran afoul of Lawrence Bragg. I wouldn't want to goof off on his watch."
Salk nodded, amused. "I suppose you're right." Salk glanced at his watch. "I'm afraid that I must take my leave. Congratulations again, Professor."
"Thank you, Dr. Salk. I hope you accomplish more great things in San Diego."
"I hope so as well. Dr. Corey? An honour to meet you as well." Bowing to Pauling and Corey, Salk left.
11 October 1962, The California Institute of Technology
eleven-thirty p.m.
The Athenaeum was almost deserted now; one waiter only remained to clean up the last remnants of uneaten food and half-empty glasses of wine. Pauling lazed back in her chair, twirling in her paw the stem of a glass of champagne that had hours ago gone flat.
"Leona?"
"Hm? Oh, Bob, I'm sorry. The heavy meal has made me drowsy. What is it?"
"You remember what Dr. Salk had to say? About Watson and Crick?"
"Yes?"
"Why weren't you honest with him? We'd first found out that they were working on DNA at the Cavendish months before you went to England."
Leona drained the glass. "Yes, I fibbed. I...well, I just wanted to avoid uncomfortable questions. It's not important."
"Uncomfortable questions about what? Leona!" Corey sat up, staring at Pauling. "Leona, we've been friends for twenty-five years. Why have you been so secretive about this? You didn't - please don't tell me that you appropriated their work. I won't believe it. You could never do something like that."
"No! No, Bob," Pauling went on in a quieter voice, looking her friend in the eye, "I swear to you that we stole nothing from Crick and Watson. But..." Pauling sank lower into her seat, fingering her empty champagne glass. "I have been holding out on you. It's no coincidence that they fled the Cavendish when they did."
"Leona, what did you do to them?"
"Believe me, Bob, it wasn't malicious! It's just that when I found out what they were trying to pull behind Rosalind's back I became enraged. It had to do with one of her photographs, you see. Anyway, when I found out, Rosalind and I decided to put a little fear of God into them. We thought they deserved it. I still think they did but..."
"Tell me, Leona. What exactly was it that they did to 'deserve it'?"
October 1951, The Cavendish Laboratory
"Crick, I'd like you to meet the newest addition to our research group. Dr. James Watson, meet Francis Crick."
Crick rose to greet the young American whom John Kendrew and Sir Lawrence Bragg had brought to his office; he was thin, gangly, and in his tennis shoes and ill-fitting tie looked every minute of eighteen years old. Doctor James Watson? Crick thought to himself doubtfully. Still, it was good to see a human face for a change.
"I'm pleased to meet you, Dr. Watson," said Crick, grasping the newcomer's hand.
"Jim, Jim," he replied, grinning and shaking. "Everyone calls me Jim."
"Dr. Watson comes to us from Indiana University," Kendrew continued. "Salvador Luria of the Phage Group recommended him highly. He'll be helping us prepare our myoglobin and haemoglobin samples for X-ray analysis."
"Are you an X-ray crystallographer, Dr. W - Jim?" asked Crick.
"No, Mr. Crick, I'm just a biologist. My doctoral thesis concerned viral replication. But I'm hoping to learn more on the physical chemistry side."
"You couldn't find a better man to learn from, Watson," said Bragg. "Crick here is one of Max Perutz's most promising graduate students."
"And perhaps I can learn something from you, Jim," added Crick with a smile. "My background is in physics but I'm hoping to learn more on the biological side."
"Excellent!" Bragg nodded his greying muzzle. "You should complement each other nicely. At any rate, Dr. Watson, welcome to the Cavendish. Now we should - "
"Ah, Dr. Kendrew, Sir Lawrence, I don't mean to interrupt, but do you mind if I ask where the john is...."
"The john?" Kendrew looked nonplussed but then worked it out. "Ah, yes. Down the hall to your left, Watson. It's the second door from the end."
"Thanks, Dr. Kendrew." Watson sauntered out.
Bragg waited until Watson was out of earshot; then he and Kendrew leaned toward Crick's ear. "Crick, keep an eye on this one, eh?" said Kendrew in an undertone. "Luria seems to have taken a liking to Watson but tells us nevertheless that he's bright but undisciplined and very flighty. He's supposed to be working in microbiology but he's got it into his head to solve the mystery of DNA; he tried to get into Maurice Wilkins's lab at King's College but they wouldn't have him."
Crick said nothing for a second. "DNA, you say?" he finally asked.
"Yes," said Bragg, shaking his head. "It seems a popular game now and no doubt Watson will have far too much to say about it. Make sure he sticks to proteins, Crick. We'd thought that he'd be more likely to listen to you since you're both, well...."
Crick sighed. "Yes, we are both, Sir Lawrence."
"Good man. Ah, here he comes."
Watson stepped jauntily back into Crick's office, wiping his hands on his trousers. "Now, where were we?" he asked, looking to Bragg and Kendrew.
"I think we can leave you to it now, Watson," replied Bragg as he and Kendrew made for the door. "Crick here can get you started. Good luck, gentlemen."
Once they had gone Watson looked at Crick and exhaled appreciately. "Rather imposing, aren't they? Bragg looks as though he could flatten me with one swipe of a paw if he wanted to."
"It does take some getting used to. I walked in fear of Lawrence Bragg when I first started working here but it was needless; you'll never meet a quieter, more even-tempered man - ah, thylacine. And one of the few really great experimental physicists left; they're getting to be a rare breed. And Kendrew's a good sort, too, although I think he's starting to get a little annoyed with me. So is Bragg, for that matter."
"Really? Why?"
"He, Kendrew and Perutz have been working for a long while on trying to use X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of haemoglobin and myoglobin. You know of Leona Pauling's work on proteins?"
Watson lit up. "'Lioness' Pauling? She's a superstar where I come from."
"Well, she used X-ray diffraction data, heaps of it, to deduce the structure of keratin and myosin. Bragg was not at all happy that he, of all people, the fellow who practically invented X-ray crystallography, lost out to the Lioness. So now Bragg, Perutz and Kendrew hunger after tastier prey."
Watson suddenly chuckled. "Keratin, haemoglobin, myosin and myoglobin. Fur, blood, and muscle. Appropriate to a pack of carnivores, aren't they?"
Crick looked astonished at Watson. "I'd never thought of it that way, Jim." He laughed in delight. "Well, anyway, Jim, Perutz and Kendrew have me drawing up Patterson contour maps from the mass of X-ray data they've been collecting on haemoglobin and myoglobin. The hope is that the contour maps will show regular structure just as Pauling found in keratin and myosin."
"And? You don't look happy about it."
"The maps are worthless. The structures are too irregular. I've been here for two years and have nothing to show for it. Frankly I'd love a chance to get onto something new." At this Crick turned to Watson with great intensity. "I understand you're interested in something new, too."
Watson nodded vigorously. "That's why I'm here. I was in Venice last year and saw Maurice Wilkins deliver a lecture on DNA. He thinks that the X-ray diffraction pictures show that it maybe has a regular structure just like the Lioness found in protein. When Luria told me that John Kendrew at the Cavendish was working on X-ray analysis of proteins I jumped at the chance; I don't know anything about X-ray diffraction but I know the answer's got to be there."
"You must tell me about Wilkins's lecture. A lot of people think DNA's a waste of time, though; they're all convinced that the genes are in the proteins, not the nucleic acids."
"I think they're wrong."
"Do you know, Jim? I suspect they're wrong too."
September 1951, The California Institute of Technology
"Look at this, Bob. It's garbage."
Robert Corey sat with Leona Pauling in the Athenaeum eating breakfast. As Pauling tore into her steak she read an article in the November 1951 Journal of the American Chemical Society. "A Phospho-tri-Anhydride Formula for the Nucleic Acids", the title said, "by Edward Ronwin."
"He's got five oxygen atoms coming off every phosphorus. That could never work. And where's the justification for it? He cites nothing."
"Hm." Corey pushed away his empty salad plate and leaned over the diagram. "The details of Ronwin's structure itself are nonsensical for sure but maybe the overall idea is correct? The central strand with the nitrogenous bases projecting outward."
"Very possibly. Steric hindrance almost certainly precludes the bases' being inside the structure." Pauling shrugged and devoured another fragment of steak. "Not that it matters much. This curiosity about the structure of nucleic acids is just a diversion."
"What about Oswald Avery's work? He thought that it was DNA alone that caused the transformation of his non-virulent Pneumococci into pathogens. I've read his '44 paper; he was pretty thorough in his elimination of other factors, I thought."
"I'm not sure it's significant. He couldn't know that his 'DNA' isolate was really pure DNA. I think it's more likely that he isolated proteins bound to a nucleic acid backbone. That makes more sense; you're not going to get the variation of structure necessary for genes without proteins. The DNA itself must be just a skeleton."
Pauling pushed her chair away from the table and let out an expansive breath, folding her paws across her abdomen. "Good breakfast. That ought to hold me for a couple of hours. And it's the proteins that do it, Bob," she added, winking at her colleague. "While you're stuck eating cellulose. What a dull molecule you ruminants have to eat. But proteins, though, that's where the action is." She forked her last piece of steak and turned it before her eyes appreciately before popping it into her mouth.
"And the DNA?" Corey replied, chuckling.
"Not nearly as satisfying. So much less variety. Honestly, I can't believe that anyone who should be taken seriously is working on DNA at all."
27 November 1951, The Cavendish Laboratory
one p.m.
"Are you sure about this, Francis?"
Watson and Crick looked doubtfully over the rickety assembly of organic molecule kits they had thrown together with ring-stands and clamps.
"The phosphate groups have to be on the inside, Jim. It's the only way to get a proper helix. It's the phosphates and sugars that must form the regular units that make up the backbone of each strand."
"But they're going to repel each other. They're all going to be negatively charged."
"Well, that's what the magnesium cations are for, to hold the three strands together. The phosphates will coordinate around the magnesium and stay in place."
"Francis, we've no evidence that there's magnesium in the structure of DNA."
"But there's no evidence against it, either. And you told me yourself what Dr. Franklin said at her seminar last month. There's not enough water of hydration for the phosphates to be on the outside. Or so you think you remember." Crick shook his head in annoyance. "Why couldn't you have taken some notes, Jim? I should have gone myself."
"Don't worry about it, Francis, I have a good memory."
"Right. Well, Wilkins should be here soon - "
At that moment a soft knock on Crick's office's door announced Wilkins's arrival and Watson went to answer. "Hello again, Dr. Wilkins, it's good to see you here. I'd like you to meet my colleague, Francis Crick."
Crick regarded Dr. Wilkins dubiously. Jim wasn't kidding; he is a bit squirrelly. But then, so is Jim. Dr. Wilkins's whiskers twitched nervously and his bespectacled face continually surveyed the room as if sniffing for some predator. "A pleasure, Mr. Crick," nodded Wilkins. "I, ah, I should warn you both that Rosie - that is to say, Dr. Franklin - will be along in a few minutes."
"Warn us?" asked Crick. He looked at Watson.
"Well, Francis, I only saw her speaking publicly at the seminar, but Dr. Wilkins tells me she's, uh, a bit intimidating in person."
"She is," confirmed Dr. Wilkins. "She's rather a lone wolf; an excellent crystallographer but she doesn't like others interfering with her work. Some of us at King's College have found working with her to be very trying." The droop of Wilkins's ears demonstrated eloquently his inclusion among those "some". "And she takes a dim view of speculation. I and others of us at the College are fairly sure that the structure of DNA is helical but she, ah, wastes few words when telling us what she thinks of our conjectures. Still, when I told her about your helical model, she insisted on having a look herself. She should be along soon - "
There came a smart rapping on Crick's door. "I'll get it, Jim," Crick said.
When Crick opened the door he involuntarily drew back a little. Dr. Rosalind Franklin was, indeed, a wolf; the glitter in her eyes was not friendly. Next to her stood a round-faced young man who looked far more at ease with Dr. Franklin than Crick thought he had any right to be. "Francis Crick, I presume?" She held out a paw. "I am Rosalind Franklin and this is my graduate student Raymond Gosling."
Gosling smiled briefly as he shook Crick's hand. "Dr. Wilkins tells us that you have built a model of DNA."
"Th-that's right, Mr. Gosling, Dr. Franklin. I have with the assistance of my colleague James Watson."
"So Dr. Wilkins informs me," said Franklin. She looked past Crick. "Ah, Dr. Wilkins, I see that you have arrived ahead of me. And this must be Dr. James Watson. Dr. Watson, Raymond Gosling."
"Dr. Watson has had the opportunity to see you speak, Dr. Franklin," Wilkins interjected. "He is quite impressed with your work."
"Indeed?" Franklin thawed by a fraction of a degree. "I'm glad you appreciated it. This is your model, then?" She pointed her muzzle at the contraption sitting on a table in the centre of the room.
"Yes, Dr. Franklin. Francis and I have spent a few weeks on it."
"And on what basis did you devise this model?"
"Ah, well, we've been trying to work from basic principles, Dr. Franklin," Watson tried to explain. "Like Leona Pauling did when modelling proteins. Knowing what we do about the nature of chemical bonds and how DNA must behave we thought that we could put together a logical structure."
"So you have no evidence to support this."
"No, I'm afraid."
"Hm." Nobody spoke as Franklin prowled about the room, bending down to inspect the model from every angle; Gosling, scrutinising the model as intently as his mentor, followed a step behind. When Franklin finally looked up to face Crick and Watson, Watson knew immediately that they had struck out.
"Gentlemen, this would never hold together. The phosphate groups cannot possibly be inside."
"But, uh, Dr. Franklin, we thought that the magnesium ions - "
"There is no magnesium inside the DNA structure, Watson. There is no room for it; the experimentally determined dimensions of the strand do not allow it. And you forget another thing. This molecule could not possibly take up as much water of hydration as DNA in fact does."
Crick suddenly glared at Watson. "But Dr. Franklin," Watson stammered, "you said at your seminar that there were only eight molecules of water per turn of the helix - "
"I said nothing of helices at all, Dr. Watson. I said that there were eight molecules of water per nucleotide; that is nearly ten times the quantity of water that your structure can account for. That could not happen unless the phosphate groups and sugars were on the outside of the structure."
Watson and Crick fell silent.
Dr. Franklin straightened up. "I think I have seen enough here. I advise you, gentlemen, to leave the task of determining the structure of DNA to those who know what they are doing. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must return to my job. Come on, Dr. Wilkins."
Dr. Franklin strode out without a backward glance, accompanied by Gosling. Dr. Wilkins, trailing after them, looked back at Watson and Crick sympathetically before leaving Crick's office.
"Jim," Crick said under his breath, "take notes next time."
"If there's a next time." Watson sagged into a chair. "No wonder Wilkins looks like somebody's about to eat him. Somebody is."
"Ray Gosling didn't seem to mind."
"The gosling and the wolf. There's a joke in there but I'm not going to make it. What's Bragg going to say when he hears of this?"
27 November 1951, The Cavendish Laboratory
two p.m.
"I'm disappointed in you, Crick."
Watson and Crick stood before Sir Lawrence Bragg, Watson fidgeting with the keys in his pocket.
"Stop that, Watson," Bragg ground out between clenched teeth. Crick saw the glint of light off Bragg's canines and hear the growl in his voice; he had never seen the old physicist this angry. Bragg held up a piece of paper.
"Gentlemen, this is a note from Maurice Wilkins. He considers the investigation of DNA to be King's College's business and no one else's; he is not pleased that two amateurs have blundered into his territory and wasted his time.
"I asked you, Crick, to keep Watson on his job. Instead he seems to have taken you off yours; your lack of success on haemoglobin is no excuse instead to engage out of boredom in extracurricular activities on the Cavendish's payroll.
"And you, Watson," continued Bragg, glaring at him. "Kendrew tells me that he's seen neither hide nor hair of you - so to speak. Have you successfully prepared a single myoglobin specimen for him since you started here?"
"No, Sir Lawrence, I haven't."
"I tell you again, both of you, that DNA is a waste of time. Only proteins can possibly have the necessary structural complexity to contain genetic information; proteins are what concern us here; and it is proteins which you, gentlemen, are supposed to be investigating. I forbid you from wasting any more time on DNA and especially from bringing any more embarrassment to the Cavendish as you did this afternoon with your model-making."
"Yes, Sir Lawrence," Watson said in dejection. They both turned to go but Bragg stopped them.
"Gentlemen...please don't think that I do not appreciate something of your...of your social position here at the Cavendish. There are not many like you here, just as there are not many like me here or anywhere, so I know it's only natural that, thrown together, you should strike up more than a merely professional collaboration. In fact I rather hoped that you would benefit from this, Crick; I'm sure that, especially after two years of constant but fruitless labour - and I know from long experience how frustrating that can be - you must sometimes feel more out of place here than ever. So I hoped that working with a fellow human would perhaps revive you a bit and bring back some of your former enthusiasm for your job here. Unfortunately," Bragg sighed, "I seem to have miscalculated.
"Crick, you are to resume your work with haemoglobin for Kendrew and Perutz. Watson, I'm taking you off Kendrew's research group; it is viruses you know, or should know, and I'm putting you back to work on TMV where you belong. Good day, gentlemen." Watson and Crick without further word left Bragg's office.
"Francis, could this have possibly turned out worse?" Watson asked.
"Well, at least we still have our jobs. Come on, Jim, let's go to the Eagle. I think we could both use a drink."
They walked on a little in silence.
"We're not giving up on this, are we, Francis?"
"Not on your life."
February 1952, The California Institute of Technology
"Don't give me that shit, Johnson! I want a proper explanation from your boss, not the run-around from one of her flunkies."
The sound of Leona Pauling's snarl stopped Robert Corey just outside her closed office door. Corey listened, appalled. His friend usually worked hard to control her leonine temper; this angry outburst was unusual for her.
"Oh, I have the right to file another application? How is that going to help me now? You'll take your sweet time processing it and when you finally get around to rejecting it again the conference will be over. Johnson, I'm tired of you." Pauling growled menacingly. "I want to talk to your boss. Now."
Corey pushed lightly on the door and, finding it unlatched, went inside. Pauling was pacing frenetically about her room as far as the telephone cord would let her.
"What's going on?" Corey whispered. Pauling glanced up long enough to point an angry claw at her desk; Corey went to the desk to find a letter. "Department of State," he read, then checked an exclamation at what the letter had to say.
"Who's this?" Pauling said. "Mr. Murray, is it? You're Johnson's superior. Well, listen here, Murray - " Pauling suddenly halted and, when she spoke again, she sounded almost contrite. "I'm sorry, Mr. Murray, that I abused Johnson like that. Oh, is that so? Well, it was still inexcusable of me. I think we can understand each other, Mr. Murray. Can you tell me what this is about?"
Corey heard nothing for a while but Murray's indistinct voice through the receiver. "I figured it was something like that," Pauling finally replied. "Is there nothing that can be done? Hm. So she's got her people all over the division now. Still, you'll try. Thank you, Mr. Murray, you've been very kind. But I must warn you, I'm not going to stop calling. I'll make the biggest nuisance of myself the State Department's ever had to deal with. And I'm sure you can guess what I'm like when I get angry." Pauling laughed mirthlessly. "You've been in the same boat yourself. Have a good day." Pauling put down the phone and leaned heavily on the edge of her desk, bowing her head.
"Leona, what was that about?" asked Corey.
"You saw the letter? They're not going to give me a passport."
"Yes. 'Not in the best interests of the United States'? What interests are those?"
"Mr. George Murray explained it to me. He's the deputy undersecretary something or other in the Passport Division of the State Department. Fortunately he's a fur himself, a lynx, and his son in high school wants to be a chemist." Pauling managed a chuckle. "Anyway he was sympathetic and gave me a straight answer. Ruth Shipley, this censorious molecule of a human being, has set herself up as Dictator of Passports because she sees Communists in every shadow. Murray tells me that she's got the division pretty well under her control over the last few years."
"So you're a Communist now?"
"Apparently. Murray says that Shipley doesn't have much regard for nuclear disarmament advocates. Or for lions and lynxes, Murray hinted. That's how I got into her blacklist."
"But the Royal Society meeting is in May. How are you going to be able to attend?"
"Probably I won't. You'll have to go by yourself. I'm going to cajole and bully and plead all I can but I'm not confident that it will accomplish anything." Pauling rubbed her face. "Let's put that aside for now. Bob, when you go to England I want you to pay a visit to King's College and talk if you can to Maurice Wilkins. He's been working hard on X-ray diffraction photography of DNA."
"Leona, I thought you weren't interested in DNA."
"I wasn't but I'm starting to think that maybe I've been wrong. I've been rereading Oswald Avery's work, for one thing. Also there's this." Pauling rummaged through the magazines on his desk, finally extracting a small pile of them with bookmarked pages. Corey looked them over.
"Erwin Chargaff, Columbia University. Didn't you meet him once?"
"Yes, in 1947. We were actually on the same transatlantic steamer headed back to the States. After talking to him for five minutes I decided that he was a consummate jackass - well, some sort of equine, anyway, as I remember - and spent the rest of the week avoiding him. Actually, Bob," Pauling said, inclining her head and peering at Corey's countenance, "you look a bit alike. You're both long in the face. And you're both vegetarians."
Corey chuckled. "Maybe I reminded of you him."
"Maybe, maybe!" Pauling grinned. "Perhaps you're right because it wasn't long after that breakfast where we looked at Ronwin's ridiculous DNA model and I made fun of your dietary habits that I got to thinking of what Chargaff said to me about his work. He's been studying the distribution of the nucleotide bases in DNA. It's not random. Everywhere he looked cytosine and guanine are always present in nearly the same proportion; adenine and thymine divide the remainder equally. What does that tell you?"
Corey thought for a second then looked up, eyes wide. "An exact matching of one pyrimidine to one purine. Two pairings."
"Precisely."
"Well, maybe it just means that DNA's a simple chain of repeating units. One purine-pyrimidine pair per unit but the units still randomly distributed. No more than that. No more meaningful than, say, the repeating glucoses in mine and Chargaff's breakfast food."
"Like cellulose, huh?" Pauling laughed. "But Chargaff's also finding that each organism's DNA he's looking at seems to have a characteristic ratio of thymine to cytosine and adenine to guanine. See these data? It's the same for different tissues within the same organism. Hominid thymus, liver, and sperm all have the same ratio of one purine to the other and one pyrimidine to the other. And it's like that with all the organisms he looked at. Why characteristic ratios if DNA's just a dumb scaffolding molecule like cellulose?"
Corey said nothing for a while as he skimmed through the Chargaff articles. "How should we proceed? Have you talked to Verner Schomaker?"
"Yes, I have. Verner's not optimistic that he can obtain, on short notice, better X-ray diffraction photographs than William Astbury's decade-old ones. And that's when he reminded me of Maurice Wilkins at King's College - they must be sitting on something good. They're not publishing yet, a couple of months ago when I first started to get curious, I wrote to Wilkins and his boss J. T. Randall and they both put me off." Pauling looked suddenly pensive. "I wonder if anyone else has approached them about DNA. They may be cagey for that reason.
"But," Pauling continued, walking up to Corey and laying a paw on his shoulder, "you can pester them in person when you're in England in a couple of months. Find out what Wilkins is up to."
"It'd be better if you could be there too, Leona. Fangs are good for pestering."
"Well, you've got those pointy antlers."
"Not nearly as persuasive."
"There's a certain Mrs. Ruth B. Shipley I wish we could persuade right now." Pauling flopped down into a chair. "I'm going to try, Bob. I'll make the State Department regret this. I'll get every scientist I know in the country on their case. I'll go to the press if I have to. You haven't heard the Lioness roar yet."
March 1952, The California Institute of Technology
"Bob, Verner, look at this."
Leona Pauling arrived in the Athenaeum where Robert Corey and Verner Schomaker were already starting on their lunch. "Maurice Wilkins relented. Once he understood that I wasn't trying to get his X-ray data from him he was ready enough to answer my question. He says that somebody else has been bothering him about DNA, him and his assistant Rosalind Franklin."
Schomaker looked up suddenly from his plate. "Rosalind Franklin! I know her. Well, I know of her. She's published in Acta Crystallographica in the past few years on the structure of coal and other forms of carbon. And Maurice Wilkins says she's his assistant?" He snorted derisively. "I can't believe that. If her published work is any guide she's well beyond merely assisting anybody."
Pauling looked thoughtfully at Schomaker. "Really? But that's how Wilkins describes her. Anyway, here's the letter."
Schomaker and Corey looked at it. "Francis Crick and James Watson?" asked Corey. "I've never heard of either of them."
"Neither had I," replied Pauling, so of course I tried to find out what I could. Watson is from Indiana University and Salvador Luria was his doctoral advisor; I don't know anything more than that. Crick is still a graduate student and not published. How did they get onto DNA? Wilkins doesn't know."
"And they just popped up with this model of theirs? What were they thinking?"
"Not much, it seems. The model was no good although Wilkins doesn't say exactly how. And as you can see Wilkins finished off by telling Bragg to keep his boys away from DNA because that's King's College's business. That's the message to me as well, no doubt." Pauling scratched her chin meditatively. "But still, we've got more competition."
Schomaker interrupted his chewing. "Are we in a race?"
"Did I say that? Actually...yes, yes I did, didn't I? Sorry, boys, didn't mean to presume."
"Dr. Pauling," said Corey, setting down his water glass for emphasis, "we run where the Lioness runs." Schomaker nodded as he swallowed.
Slowly Leona broke into a grin. "Thank you, Drs. Corey and Schomaker. I am honoured. But, hm." She grew thoughtful again. "It's frustrating being trapped halfway around the world from where everything's going on."
"No success in the passport fight?"
"Well, I think I've succeeded in terrorising a good number of low-level State Department clerks. But no, Bob, no real progress. Hm. Now you're going to England in May, Bob, but only for a short while. If only there were someone who could stay indefinitely and pass news on to me. Hm..."
Corey and Schomaker watched as a light dawned in Pauling's eyes and she began to chuckle. "You know my son, don't you, Verner, Bob?"
"Um..." Corey looked nervously at Verner. "Yes, I do, Leona, but - "
"Oh, you don't have to be diplomatic with me, Bob, I'm not going to get angry. He cares more about cars than chemistry and he has yet to meet a furry female who he won't fall for. Anyway, I've been thinking about where he can go to work towards his Ph.D. and, hopefully, to get a little scientific discipline beaten into him. Bob, what would you say if I were to tell you that Pauling is going to Cambridge?"
"Cambridge had better watch out."
March 1952, The Cavendish Laboratory
"Crick, Watson." They looked up to see John Kendrew's solemn, whiskered face. "I have important news for you. Pauling is coming to work at the Cavendish."
Watson narrowly avoided tripping over his feet as he jumped up from his chair. Crick at his desk dropped his pen and stared at Kendrew. "Kendrew, you're joking, surely?"
"No, I am perfectly serious. Pauling is coming to work here - in this research group, no less," Kendrew continued, ears twitched up to mark the seriousness of his announcement.
"But what about that passport business?" Watson asked.
"Apparently it isn't a problem now. Pauling has travelled here free from U. S. government interference."
"But Kendrew, it doesn't make any sense!" exclaimed Crick. "Pauling here? Bragg can't stand even the mention of her. After that business with the protein alpha-helix you know how jealous the Tasmanian Tiger is of the American Lioness."
"Who said anything about the Lioness?"
"You did, Kendrew! You said Pauling was coming here!"
"He is."
"'He'??" asked Watson.
Kendrew nodded soberly. "Peter Pauling, Leona Pauling's son. He's come here to the Cavendish to work towards his doctorate. He's only twenty-one and, according to Dr. Pauling, not entirely a tame lion; he'll need a bit of looking after. But I thought you'd be glad, Watson; you'll get a chance to work with someone nearer to your own age." Kendrew's voice remained as level as ever but the mischief in his eye and the waving of his tail betrayed his amusement.
"Kendrew, you enjoyed that, didn't you?" cried Watson. "'Pauling's coming to work here.' And I thought you had no sense of humour; I should have known better than to trust a fox. Well, you've had your little joke. You made all that up, right?"
"No, Watson, I didn't utter any untrue word. In fact, Peter's waiting outside for me to introduce him. Hence..." At this a young lion stepped into the room. He grinned toothily upon seeing Watson and Crick. "Gentlemen, meet Peter Pauling. Peter, these are Francis Crick and Dr. James Watson."
"Pleased to meet you, guys," said Peter, advancing, shaking hands with abandon, and favouring everyone with a good-humoured grin that showed most of his teeth. "Especially you, Dr. Watson; it'll be good to work with another American."
"Y-yeah, same here."
"Dr. Kendrew," said Peter, "I have to admit that wait and the excitement has made me hungry. Perhaps you wouldn't mind eating lunch with me, Jim, Francis?"
"Well, it's a little early, but no, certainly I don't mind," Crick quickly replied. "And I'm sure Jim would be glad to come along. And yourself, Kendrew?"
"No, I'll leave you three to acquaint yourselves. Gentlemen." Kendrew inclined his head slightly towards them before leaving, still roguishly waving his tail.
Peter Pauling giggled. "That was my idea, guys. When he told me about how you hoped to follow in the footsteps of the Lioness I suggested that he introduce me as though I was my mom. Kendrew really got into it, I have to say." Peter went on giggling.
"Well," Crick said, suddenly chuckling in turn, "it is the closest I've seen Kendrew come to laughing. Here, Jim and I will show you the way to the dining hall." They all left Crick's office. "And maybe, Peter, you can tell us about what your mother is doing."
"Oh, Kendrew warned me you two would try to pick my brain. I really don't know all that much, Francis. My mom and I aren't, er, aren't on the best of terms. In fact she sent me here partly in hopes that your boss would help straighten me out a bit and make me more of a professional."
"But certainly you must know something, Peter," Jim said.
"My mother's always working on half a dozen things at once. She's investigating ferromagnetism, I remember. Oh, and she's been working up a model of nucleic acids."
Watson stopped dead and Peter looked at him oddly. "What, what did I say?"
"The Lioness is working on DNA?"
"Yeah, with Bob Corey. Bob's coming to England in two months and he plans on visiting King's College to talk to Maurice Wilkins."
Watson turned to Crick; his face was white. "Oh, no."
March 1952, The Cavendish Laboratory
"Worse and worse, Francis."
Watson rushed into Crick's office; Crick was there reading The Nature of the Chemical Bond. Watson pushed a newspaper clipping under Crick's nose; its title read, "Nobel Laureates Denounce State Department".
Crick read. "Edwin McMillan? Robert Millikan? And Glenn Seaborg? How on earth did Pauling manage that? You'd think that the last thing an atomic physicist would want is to help Leona Pauling."
"The Lioness has a lot of friends, Francis. She's got everybody from Caltech at her back and that's a good start. I wouldn't be surprised if Pauling's on her way to getting the entire National Academy of Sciences either behind her or afraid of her. She's going to get her passport, Francis, it's only a matter of time."
"After which we're lost. When Pauling and Corey see Wilkins's X-ray pictures there's no way they'll fail to come up with the structure. But," he went on, slightly more cheerfully, "at least Bragg will support us now. He may think DNA is a waste of time but he's not going to want to see Pauling beat him again on anything."
"That's small consolation, Francis."
"We don't even know that Pauling or Corey would actually be able to see the pictures, Jim. Peter told me earlier that his mother wrote Wilkins some months ago about his X-ray diffraction data but that Wilkins declined to cooperate."
"OK, there's a chance. But we can't count on chances. We're going to have to see that X-ray data first."
"How? Burgle King's College?"
"That's not such a bad idea."
"Don't be silly, Jim. Can you imagine what would happen to us when we were caught?" Crick sat back and signed. "You know, Wilkins and Franklin are never going to show anyone anything except the pictures they want people to see."
"Perhaps if I ask nicely? There's nothing to lose by trying."
April 1952, King's College
Rosalind Franklin, returning from lunch, was just outside the door of her laboratory in King's College when she paused, testing the air. There's someone here who shouldn't be, she thought. She cautiously pushed the door the rest of the way open.
"Dr. Watson? What are you doing here?" Her hackles were up. "This is my laboratory and I do not recall inviting you."
"I'm sorry, Dr. Franklin, but the door was open and I thought it would be OK if I waited inside."
"Indeed. Well, Dr. Watson, why have you called on me unannounced?"
"Have you heard the news? Leona Pauling is working on DNA. She's doing everything she can to get a passport to come here and when she does she's going to want to see your DNA pictures."
"She is welcome to ask for them. Whether or not I accede is my business."
"But don't you see? If Pauling sees the photographs she'll figure out the structure of DNA. She'll publish first and get all the credit. We have to work together, beat the Lioness at her own game - "
"Game?" Franklin's voice grew menacing. "This is all a game to you?"
"You know what I mean. Aren't you interested in getting the answer before Pauling does?"
"No. My concern is arriving at the answer correctly, not in arriving at it first."
"Look, I'm not the only one who feels this way. Lawrence Bragg does."
"If that is true then Sir Lawrence Bragg is a fool for letting professional jealousy override his better judgment. But then his judgment must be failing him already; he hired Crick and you."
"Wait a second - "
"You and Crick both have jobs to do and yet you throw them aside as though they were toys that you have grown tired of. DNA is just another toy to you, a newer one. You're both like...like little boys!"
"That's not fair, Rosie - "
"'Rosie'?" A flame blazed up in her eyes. Baring her teeth Franklin advanced towards Watson. "Watson, you will do me the favour of leaving my lab at once and not returning. I will submit to no further insults from you!" Watson backed away from her, step by step, until he reached the doorway. "OUT!" Franklin snarled, and Watson fled.
Franklin closed her door and sagged against it, panting heavily. Stumbling to a chair she laid her head on the benchtop and closed her eyes.
A minute later she heard a soft knock on the door. Without raising her head she shouted, "If it's you again, Watson, go away."
"Watson? No, Dr. Franklin, it's Ray Gosling. I heard yelling. Are you all right?"
"Yes, Ray, I'm fine. Let yourself in; the door's unlatched." She straightened up.
Ray came in and started when he saw Franklin's dishevelled appearance. "Dr. Franklin, what happened?"
"Do you know James Watson?"
"Not really. He was the young biologist at the Cavendish, right, who showed us that silly DNA model?"
"That's the man. He was here." Franklin looked at her paw as though she'd never seen it before. "I did it again, Ray. Watson must have thought I was about to lunge for his throat. One of these days I fear that I may do so. I can't control it, Ray, I haven't learned how."
"But he must have given you a good reason."
"Maybe. But you know from experience. I don't always have a good reason, do I?"
Gosling regarded Franklin quietly for a few moments then slowly shook his head.
"I'm sorry, Ray. You put up with a lot from me. Most humans wouldn't have the patience you do."
"Don't mention it, Dr. Franklin. But you haven't told me what he came here for."
Franklin stood up and rubbed her face. "He wanted to get me to help him solve the DNA problem before Leona Pauling does. Her colleague at Caltech, Robert Corey, is coming here next month to attend the Royal Academy conference. Possibly Pauling will be able to come as well although that is not certain. Undoubtedly Corey and Pauling wish to speak with Wilkins and myself. About DNA, of course. It gets tiresome."
"Even from Leona Pauling?"
"Even from Pauling. I don't approve of her methods, Ray; she's brilliant and gets away with brilliant guesses but they are just that, guesses. Still...I should like to meet her some day. I heard that she has quite the forcible personality."
"As forcible as yours?"
Franklin managed a laugh. "I hope not, Ray. I hope not."
May 1952, King's College
"I am glad for this opportunity to view your work first-hand, Dr. Franklin."
Robert Corey looked appreciatively around Franklin's laboratory. The Royal Society conference on proteins was finished now and Franklin, who had also attended the conference, had invited Corey to King's College.
"My pleasure. Ah, you must meet my colleague Raymond Gosling. Ray, this is Robert Corey from the California Institute of Technology."
"It's an honour, Dr. Corey," Gosling said with a slight bow.
"Now you were telling me, Dr. Franklin, that you and Mr. Gosling have succeeded in preparing DNA in two forms."
"That is correct, Dr. Corey," replied Franklin, walking him over to her photographic setup."
"I hope you won't think it rude, Dr. Franklin, if I sit here?" asked Corey, indicating a chair near at hand. "I suffered from an attack of poliomyelitis when I was young and since then I've had difficulty when standing for too long."
"Dr. Corey, you're not being rude at all. Please, make yourself as comfortable as you can." After Corey sank into the chair she continued. "We had been using hydrogen gas to displace air from our cameras and Ray accidentally discovered that bubbling the gas through water produced a radical change in the resulting photographs. Before his discovery we had only succeeded in taking photographs such as these." She went to a filing cabinet and produced a photograph. The X-ray diffraction pattern was spread out in a soft, symmetrical, almost featureless blur.
Corey grimaced. "Those aren't much better than William Astbury's photographs."
"Indeed they are not. However, when Ray used hydrogen bubbled through water, we began to obtain photographs like this." She produced another photograph that showed an unmistakeable grid-like pattern of spots.
"Incredible!" Corey exclaimed.
"That is how we learned of the importance of humidity. I began experimenting with using saturated solutions of various salts to produce a constant, known humidity in the camera. At very high humidities, above ninety-two percent, we observed another change in the diffraction patterns showing a transformation into a less ordered, more heavily hydrated form."We call the drier form as observed in this photograph," she continued, indicating the second photograph, "the 'A structure'; the wetter form we call the 'B structure'. A fibre usually can change from the A to the B form and back reversibly with change in humidity but occasionally an A form fibre will transform even in low humidity into the B form permanently. Neither Ray nor I know why this happens."
"So all of the previous X-ray photographers of DNA were in fact attempting to photograph a mixture of uncertain hydration. Well done, Dr. Franklin. May I see a photograph of the B form?"
"Unfortunately, Dr. Corey, I am unable to show you any. Three weeks ago Dr. Wilkins went to John Randall and told him that he could no longer endure working in the same laboratory as me. Wilkins wanted me gone but Dr. Randall eventually got him to accept a compromise. We are to work separately now, he on the B form exclusively, myself on the A form. I'm fairly sure, however, that the A form is the most crystalline and thus the most likely to yield the best data for structure determination."
"Do you think that Dr. Wilkins would be willing to show me any of his B form photographs?"
"Possibly. I do not think that you would learn much, however; the B form as photographed doesn't exhibit the great regularity observed in the A form."
"Hm." Corey regarded the photograph of the A structure meditatively. "I'd sure like to show this to Leona."
"I regret to say, Dr. Corey, that I cannot do so. I..." She looked at Gosling before resuming. "I don't think it would be fair to the efforts of the laboratory as a whole."
"That's perfectly understandable. But do you mind if I take some notes?"
"Not at all."
While Corey pulled out a pocket notebook Gosling turned to Franklin. "Dr. Franklin, I think that I had better return to the latest sample preparation. Dr. Corey, it was good to meet you," he said before departing for a remoter corner of the lab.
"Dr. Corey? May I ask you a question?"
Corey looked up from his writing. "Of course, Dr. Franklin."
"What is it like to work with Leona Pauling?"
"Incredibly rewarding, I must say. Of course I would say this, being her friend, but I really do think she is brilliant, always full of ideas and always ready to discuss them with Verner and myself."
"Verner? Is that Verner Schomaker?"
"Yes. You have heard of him?"
"Certainly. I have read some of his papers in Acta Crystallographica."
"He told Leona and me that he liked your studies of coal and graphite."
"Really?" For a moment Franklin said nothing. "But about Prof. Pauling. I've heard that she has a fierce temper. They call her 'the Lioness' for a reason, do they not?"
"Yes, they do." Corey put down his pencil. "She's polite and good-humoured most of the time, really, but occasionally she does get angry. This business with the State Department and her passport has made her furious and more than once her claws have come out. And, I admit, now and again she's blown up at us. The first time that happened to me I galloped out of the room. But she was so ashamed afterwards - I had to forgive her. It's just part of her nature, after all."
"Yes," said Franklin quietly.
May 1952, The California Institute of Technology
Leona Pauling, in her office, fumbled for a pair of reading glasses and squinted at a page of straggling handwriting written in blue ink.
"Hm. 'Dear Mama...'" She read silently for a bit. "'I have been considering buying a motorcycle,'" she then said to herself, "'which would give me convenience and if I travelled enough would be cheaper than the train....I could, perhaps, borrow some money for a bike.' Oh, I'm sure. '...I would also like to buy a dinner jacket, and the shorter OED, and some old English teaspoons, and an overcoat....'" She turned to the next page. "And he wants new curtains for his room, too." Pauling shook her head in annoyance.
"Oh, this is interesting. 'Yes, I met Crick and Odile. They live at 19 Portugal Place, having moved out of the Green Door. I see Francis daily....' Francis? 'Great fun. Very nice. I must begin French lessons with some woman who has a house full of French girls. Jim goes there.' Now it's Jim too? '...Hardly any furry females in this town. But Max Perutz has just hired an au pair, an attractive cheetah, very nice.' Grr.
"'...I might have need of $500 cash in a couple of months or at Easter. The Easter vac. is from 25 March to 16 April, and Perutz - ' And his very nice au pair no doubt! ' - Perutz & Kendrew and perhaps I will goto Austria to ski for a bit.' Peter, haven't you been doing anything useful over there? Wait a moment - " Pauling suddenly sat up straighter.
"'Has Bob Corey got back to you yet? He talked to me yesterday before leaving Cambridge about visiting King's College. He said that Rosie Franklin was helpful but wouldn't give him any of her pictures. What he saw was good, though. Franklin and her grad student Ray Gosling have got some high quality photographs of crystalline DNA, better than anyone else's. But she & Wilkins don't get along and they don't share each other's work. Bob also talked to Wilkins but his pictures aren't as good as Rosie's. Rosie told Bob to pass on her respects to you and Verner Schomaker. Bob told me too that Rosie was a very interesting fur, a wolf, rather severe-looking but pleasant when he got to know her. She worked for three years in Paris, he said. Maybe when my French gets better I can introduce myself to her.' God!" 'Much love, Peter.'"
Pauling set down the letter. Robert Corey had, in fact, not yet returned and was probably still on the steamer back to America. He'd give Pauling a much more detailed report but Paul's letter still told him something important. Writing Wilkins about his X-ray pictures had been a waste of time: it wasn't Wilkins who was getting the results but Franklin and, without Franklin, Wilkins evidently wasn't accomplishing much.
"If only I could meet Rosalind Franklin," Pauling said to herself. But at the moment Ruth B. Shipley made it impossible. The State Department was, maybe, weakening a bit under the pressure; George Murray had written Pauling to say that the atmosphere in the Department was getting uncomfortable and increasingly hostile towards Shipley. "She's making a lot of enemies," Murray had written. But still Pauling could not travel to England.
She sighed and pulled herself towards her typewriter.
"Dear Peter: Thank you for your report on Bob's visit. Corey hasn't returned to Caltech yet but it sounds, from what you say, that he will have much to discuss with me when he arrives.
"You have not told me what Watson and Crick are working on. Have they made any progress on DNA? It is good to see, though, that you have found a kindred spirit in James Watson. 'A house full of French girls,' indeed! And please try to keep your mind off Max Perutz's baby-sitting cheetah for long enough to do at least a little work. Kendrew's last letter to me was not encouraging. I did not send you to Cambridge to chase tail.
"Even without the King's College X-ray data on DNA Bob and I may have enough to go on to devise a model. After you told me of Alexander Todd's work at Cambridge I wrote him and he has given me valuable information on the sugar-phosphate bonding in the nucleotides, even sending me three samples of the pyrimidine compounds. With that and the existing X-ray photographs we may be able to proceed. The structure is almost certainly helical - I have always thought so - and Todd's findings convince me that the core of the helix must be made up of chains of alternating deoxyribose and phosphate groups.
"How much would it cost in postage for you to send copies of the Times and the New Statesman on to us - perhaps saving them up for a week or two, bundling them up...."
May 1952, King's College
"Dr. Franklin, I've developed the photographic plate from your most recent X-ray exposure." Gosling, holding a sheet of glass, approached Franklin at her desk.
"Thank you, Ray. Is the same A-form sample used in the forty-eighth photograph?"
"Yes it is. But, as you can see..." Ray held the plate up to the light. Instead of the A form's grid of spots the photograph showed instead a cross-shaped pattern of parallel lines.
Franklin sighed. "It happened again, didn't it? Did you check the humidity in the camera?"
"Yes, Dr. Franklin. Seventy-four percent."
Franklin growled quietly. "That fibre gave us the best A form photographs! Now it's useless. And after a hundred hours of camera time."
"Shall I file the plate away? The B form is Dr. Wilkins's terrority now; perhaps we should give it to him."
Franklin thought for a few seconds. "No, let's keep the plate. The B form may be Wilkins's business now but he must rely upon his own photographic efforts there. It's a bit cruel of us, I suppose...if his job is to be photographing the B structure of DNA, perhaps the least we should do is to show him what a proper X-ray photograph of it is supposed to look like."
Gosling shook his head. "Dr. Franklin, you do exhibit a wicked streak sometimes."
"I know. But I can't seem to help myself; Wilkins brings out the worst in me. It's just in my nature, I suppose."
"Forgive me for saying it, Dr. Franklin, but you should be kinder to Dr. Wilkins. He's not a bad sort, really, even if he isn't that good a crystallographer."
"Perhaps. But I'm not soon going to forgive how he patronised me when I began working here. Ray, I know how magnanimous you are, but still I can't understand how you can remain friends with that little squirrel."
Ray's face fell. "He was my advisor once, Dr. Franklin. I can't stop being friendly toward him, even if he does seem to have a blind spot regarding you. Perhaps that's just my nature. Forgive me."
"No, I'm the one who is acting foolish here, Ray, chiding you for being good-natured. Some of these days I wish I were the same way." Franklin reached for a notebook and a fountain pen. "At any rate we must record the results of this exposure, however disappointing. 'Photograph fifty-one: spoiled.' Eh, I should probably be more specific than that." She went on scribbling. "And then begin preparing another fibre. If we've another hundred hours to waste we had best start wasting them immediately."
"Right. I'll put the plate away first." Gosling was about to step away from Franklin when he stopped, holding the plate up to the light again. "Dr. Franklin, I know that you've been dead against drawing premature conclusions. But don't you think that this," he continued, holding up the plate, "suggests a helical structure?"
"Ray! Why this obsession with helices? Wilkins, those idiots at the Cavendish, and now you? Let me see that again." Ray handed Franklin the plate and she looked closely at it. "It is suggestive of a helical structure, I admit. But only the B form shows it. I should think that if the basic structure of DNA were helical we should see evidence of this in the A form photographs. But we don't. I'm very far from being sure but I suspect that the fundamental structure of DNA is two-stranded and non-helical. But that's as much speculation as you'll get from me, Ray."
Gosling chuckled. "Much more than I've a right to expect, Dr. Franklin. Very well, away this goes." Gosling went to cabinet to stow the plate.
July 1952, The Cavendish Laboratory
"Hey guys." Peter Pauling came into the office, a small bundle of paper under his arm and a half-eaten roast beef sandwich in his hand.
Crick suppressed a groan. Peter could be a lot of fun to spend time with; he was a great wit and drinking companion and Watson, perhaps typically for an American, had warmed to Peter's love of cars and motorcycles. But as a chemist Peter Pauling was a dead loss; he seemed to spend all of his time at the Cavendish soaking up enormous volumes of alcohol, eating vast quantities of meat - and not always cooked, Crick thought with a shudder - and trying to chat up every woman at the Institute who had fur or a tail.
Watson thought he knew what Peter wanted and tried to forestall him. "It's a bit early for beers, Peter. Maybe in a couple of hours?"
"No, Jim, you've got the wrong idea. My mom sent me a manuscript I think you two might want to look at. She and Corey think they've worked out a structure for DNA."
Watson froze. "What from? You told us that Rosie Franklin wouldn't give Corey any of her X-ray pictures."
"Well, she thought that, with the other X-ray data on DNA, Corey's account of talking to Rosie, and Alex Todd's work, they had enough information to figure it out."
"A blind guess," Crick exclaimed.
"But if anyone can see in the dark," replied Watson, "it's the Lioness. Especially when she's on the prowl."
"Anyway, fellows, here's the rough draft of her and Bob Corey's paper." He waved the manuscript before them.
"Give it here!" Watson seized the stack of paper from Peter's paws and slammed it down on the table. He read for a minute and then began to laugh. "Francis, she blew it! The Lioness blew it! She made the same mistake we did!"
"Impossible!" Crick rushed to Watson's side and read over his friend's shoulder. "You're right, Jim. A triple helix with the phosphates on the inside. Incredible. How could the Lioness get it so wrong?"
"Well, she didn't have Rosie the Big Bad Wolf telling her she was wrong."
"But certainly Pauling must have seen that the phosphate groups would ionise and repel each other. At least we tried to account for that but she didn't even try; she assumes that they don't dissociate at all."
"Wait a minute, guys." Peter looked to and fro at Watson and Crick as they talked. "Are you saying that you made a model like this one of my mother's?"
"Yes, Peter," Crick said brightly. "A bit more than a year ago in fact." He rubbed his hands. "I can't wait to tell Bragg. Once he hears about Pauling's failure he'll beg us to keep going on the DNA work."
"He'll have to," Watson agreed. "He can't give Pauling any chance to recover. When she realises her mistake she'll work ten times as hard to get Bragg. A humiliated Lioness is a dangerous Lioness."
"Yes," Crick deadpanned, "a Lioness cheated of her prey."
Watson giggled. Crick joined him and then turned to Peter. "Peter, I think we will join you at the Eagle. But first could you take down a message for your mother? Let her know that we admire her efforts, and were struck by the ingenuity of the structure - "
June 1952, Cambridge, UK
"WHAAAT?"
Peter Pauling stepped back involuntarily from the phone. He knew well what happened when his mother lost control of her temper - Peter had, he had to admit to himself, had given her many opportunities to lose it - and was glad that several thousand miles separated him from her blazing eyes and gleaming fangs.
And a transatlantic phone call was not cheap, running almost ten pounds per minute. The message from Crick must have really have knocked her for a loop.
"I'm afraid it's true, Mama. Jim and Francis really did come up with a model like yours a year ago."
"And they're very pleased, aren't they? 'We were very struck by the ingenuity of the structure,'" Peter's mother repeated with a growl. "'The only doubt I have is that I do not see what holds it together.' When I get a message like that from Francis Crick - through you, no less - my patience with Homo sapiens is taxed to the limit."
"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Mama. Francis and Jim are my friends."
"You - " But she stopped herself and Peter could hear his mother taking deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. "I wish I wouldn't talk like this either. And I shouldn't rip into your friends or into you. I'm sorry."
"Francis is right, isn't he?"
"Yes, Peter, he is. I tried to convince myself that inside the centre of the helix the phosphate groups would not ionise, that there'd be some kind of special chemical environment inside the structure. Bob was never happy with that explanation and I should have listened to him. How could I have been so blind....
"I know my mistake, Peter," Leona Pauling said suddenly. "I've been thinking too much of proteins. There the side groups of the amino acids have to be on the outside of the helix because they're all too different to fit together inside. I've been treating the nucleotide base groups, the purines and pyrimidines, the same way, thinking they need to be outside the DNA helix, out of the way. I've been doing everything possible to put those bases outside. But that's wrong, isn't it? There are twenty amino acid side groups but only four bases in DNA. Two groups of two. Why did I ignore that?"
"What are you going to do now, Mama?"
"I'm not sure. Bob and I could keep squinting at blurry X-ray pictures and building models for months and not get anywhere. Verner has offered to try duplicating Franklin's and Gosling's photography but it would consume too much of his time and, at any rate, he clearly thinks that I'm getting too personally involved in this. But I can't give up now, Peter. The answer's close at hand. I can smell it."
"No luck with the passport office?"
"Not really. We've stirred up trouble but Ruth Shipley is standing fast."
"Maybe you could stow away on an Atlantic cargo ship. Or eat Ruth Shipley."
Leona Pauling actually laughed. "That would make great headlines, wouldn't it, when I was found out? 'Man-Eating Lioness Chemist Now in Captivity.' No, Peter, I want to do this right."
"Do you want to pass any message back to Francis Crick, Mama?"
"Ohhh...just give them my thanks and appreciation for their critique. But try to scare them a bit for me, won't you, Peter? Just a bit?"
"Mama, I'm not going to threaten to bite them, if that's what you mean."
"No! You know these guys, you can think of something. Wait, I know. Tell them you're dating Rosalind Franklin."
"They'll never believe that!"
"Oh, if they ask you how you managed it or how it's going just wink and show your teeth a little. It's amazing how far a lion's winning smile will go when it comes to dealing with humans. Say, how is your French coming along?"
July 1952, The Cavendish Institute
Crick came into his office to find Watson sitting at his desk, reading a small piece of paper.
"It seems that Rosie the Big Bad Wolf has a sense of humour after all, Francis. Maurice Wilkins gave this to me. She's been handing it around."
Crick took the paper and read.
"IT IS WITH GREAT REGRET THAT WE HAVE TO ANNOUNCE THE DEATH, ON FRIDAY 18th JULY 1952, THE DEATH OF D.N.A. HELIX (CRYSTALLINE.)
"DEATH FOLLOWED A PROTRACTED ILLNESS WHICH AN INTENSIVE COURSE OF BESSELISED INJECTIONS HAS FAILED TO RELIEVE.
"A MEMORIAL SERVICE WILL BE HELD NEXT MONDAY OR TUESDAY.
"IT IS HOPED THAT DR. M. H. F. WILKINS WILL SPEAK IN MEMORY OF THE LATE HELIX.
"[signed] R. E. FRANKLIN [and] R. G. GOSLING."
"'Besselised'?" asked Watson.
"It refers to the Bessel functions. Alec Stokes used them in X-ray diffraction analysis of helical structures." Crick looked briefly at the note again before crumpling it and hurling it into the waste-basket.
"Do you think she's right, Francis?"
"There's no way for us to know. She's the one with the camera and the data. Blasted wolf-woman. Why does she have to hide it all from us?"
"Why does she specify 'crystalline'?"
"Jim, it is a little hard to employ X-ray crystallography without crystals." But wait - " Crick thought for a moment then looked pointedly at Watson. "Do you remember that colloquium at King's College last November?"
"Don't remind me, Francis. I'll know to take notes next time."
"That's not why I brought it up. You did remember, at least, that Rosie obtained pictures of two forms of DNA, the A and B forms."
"That's right," replied Watson, warming up now. "It's coming back to me. B was wetter than A, she said, and less crystalline."
"So when she announces the death of the crystalline DNA helix - perhaps that implies she's thinking only of the A form. She's only working from half of her data."
"Hey! You may be on to something there."
"When you talk to Wilkins again, Jim, remember to ask him. Our helix may return from the dead."
July 1952, The California Institute of Technology
Leona Pauling sipped a cup of coffee in her office as she read a letter written on plain paper.
Dear Professor Pauling:
It worked. You can't begin to imagine how happy many of us here are to see Shipley gone. Probably she'll go on to a career of appearing before Congress waving lists of Communist furs in the State Department but we don't care; it could hardly be worse for us than it was when she was running the Passport Division into the ground.
I suspect that Acheson was starting to regard Shipley as an embarrassment. You did a great job of mobilizing the academic community; when you and twenty other of the country's best scientists got together publicly to compare Shipley's actions to Russian suppression of 'Western science' Acheson must have winced.
But we here made sure that the State Department got to be a sultry place for Shipley before that. And it wasn't just us furs; Shipley made herself very unpopular over the years and we had plenty of allies. Still, I don't think we'd have had the wherewithal to gang up on her if you hadn't kicked us all into action. I can't say you were the biggest nuisance the Department ever had to deal with but you certainly roared the loudest.
Enjoy your trip to Great Britain.
Very truly yours,
George Murray.
P.S. My son asks me to give you his thanks. He's devouring the copy of College Chemistry you sent him. Us felines have always been good at devouring things, haven't we?"
Then Pauling bent over a copy of the Los Angeles Times to read a small news item.
"Chief of State Department Passport Office Retires," said the headline. "Ruth B. Shipley, the head of the Passport Division of the State Department since 1945, controversial for her denial of passport and visa applications to many prominent Americans for their suspected ties to Communism, announced her imminent retirement, citing family concerns and ill health. Her replacement has not yet been named."
Pauling closed the newspaper and from her pocket pulled out a small booklet. "Passport, United States of America," it said. Flipping it open Pauling read, "Date of expiration: 31 July 1962," and regarded her picture. The same wide smile that Dr. Leona Pauling wore in her passport photograph was on her face now; the Lioness could perhaps be forgiven, in the circumstances, for ever so slightly baring her fangs.
7 August 1952, King's College
noon
"It is a pleasure to meet you at last, Dr. Pauling."
Maurice Wilkins stood with Leona Pauling and Rosalind Franklin in his office, looking rapidly from one to the other. He sniffed the air nervously. "And may I introduce my colleague Dr. Rosalind Franklin."
"It's an honour, Dr. Pauling."
"You have been working here in biophysics at King's College since the beginning, is that correct, Dr. Wilkins? Did you begin working on DNA from the first?" Pauling asked as they stepped out of Wilkins's office and down the corridor.
"No, not at first. Professor John Randall appointed me to the Biophysics Research Unit here in 1946; he was my doctoral advisor at Birmingham where I completed my graduate work in solid-state physics but, when Randall's focus shifted to biological applications I gladly joined him. But we did not begin to work in earnest on DNA until 1950, employing ultraviolet spectrophotometry and now of course X-ray crystallography."
"And yourself, Dr. Franklin?" asked Pauling.
"Dr. Randall hired me in 1951 to..." She darted a sidelong look at Wilkins. "...to continue the X-ray survey of DNA with Raymond Gosling. You must meet Ray Gosling, Dr. Pauling; he is a diligent and promising student."
"I would indeed, Dr. Franklin. In fact, perhaps you can introduce me?" Pauling turned to Wilkins. I hope you don't mind if I borrow your colleague for a time, Dr. Wilkins? And perhaps we can all convene later in the dining hall. In an hour, perhaps?"
Wilkins looked uncertainly at Franklin and then at Pauling. "Well, I should mention that, as a general rule, we do not admit - "
"Do not admit Americans? Dr. Wilkins!" Pauling continued to speak jovially but she grinned at Wilkins a little more widely than usual. "Certainly tradition can bend in this one instance? What do you say, Dr. Franklin?"
"Dr. Pauling, I should be delighted to dine with you and Dr. Wilkins." She also favoured Wilkins with a wide smile.
"Ah, well, that's settled then," Wilkins said with an effort. "I shall look forward to dining with you in the common room at one o'clock." He nodded towards Pauling and Franklin and left his office.
Pauling waited for his footsteps to fade into the distance. "Asking you to introduce me to Raymond Gosling was a bit of ruse, I admit, Dr. Franklin, but I wanted to get away from Dr. Wilkins. Do you mind if we talk a little by ourselves?"
"Not at all, Dr. Pauling."
"Was Wilkins about to say what I thought he was going to say?"
Franklin sighed. "Yes. At King's College female scientists do not rate admittance to the common room."
"Idiots." They walked outside and breathed in the cool autumn air. "Did Bob Corey tell you about Verner Schomaker? He's a good friend of Bob's and mine and an excellent X-ray crystallographer."
"Yes, Dr. Corey did speak of him. I gather that Dr. Schomaker is acquainted with my work."
"He is indeed. And he wonders why you're working only as an assistant to Maurice Wilkins."
"Assistant? Is that what Maurice Wilkins is calling me?" Franklin growled. "Professor Randall hired me directly to take over the X-ray crystallographic survey of DNA. Wilkins had been getting nowhere for months and Randall was losing his patience with him. But Wilkins doesn't seem to have accepted this; he treats me as thought I were hired as a laboratory technician. He's a second-rater, Dr. Pauling...." Franklin stopped herself. "No, I'm being intemperate."
"Maybe you've got a right to be. I had to put up with the same nonsense when I was younger, you know."
Franklin stopped and looked speculatively at Pauling. "You did? I have to admit it's a little hard to imagine. I am not nearly as familiar with your work as I ought to be - I have been perhaps a little too narrowly focussed on my own research. But I know well your reputation. When the Lioness roars everyone listens."
Pauling winced. "'The Lioness'. I don't suppose I'll ever be rid of that nickname."
"I'm sorry, Dr. Pauling, I didn't mean to offend."
"Oh, I'm not offended. I suppose the name's appropriate but it wasn't always like that. I don't like roaring, Dr. Franklin; I've worked all my life to keep that side of me in check. But sometimes I couldn't help myself. Especially when I got treated like a technician all the time - or like a secretary. Or, worse, as part of the Caltech dating pool."
"Oh, God...can you believe that Wilkins tried to court me?"
"That must have worked out well."
"Ray Gosling has helped to keep me sane. At least he doesn't try to chat me up like so many other students here."
"Never?"
"Well, once or twice. But he was sensible enough to take the hint and stop. I didn't even have to snarl at him."
They walked on in silence for a short while. "I confess, Dr. Franklin, that I came here hoping to grill you about your DNA work. I feel something of a heel now for thinking it."
"You have a cat's curiosity, Dr. Pauling." Pauling laughed but Franklin grew serious again. "But I have my own confession to make. Lately I've been thinking that perhaps Ray and I could use your advice. We have worked hard to amass the best data we can on DNA before going any further - I know that this may seem stolid and uninspired to you, Dr. Pauling. Forgive me for saying that I tend to mistrust your approach. It seems to me too speculative at times - trying to imagine a structure instead of calculating it from the data."
Pauling nodded. "It is speculative. It's the way I think, though. And I have Bob Corey to save me. He's meticulous to a fault and wouldn't let my proposed alpha-helix structure out the door until he was satisfied of its theoretical plausibility. But, yes, you're right. 'Theoretically plausible' isn't the same as 'experimentally supported'."
"But that's just it." Franklin stopped walking and turned to face Pauling. "As I was saying, Ray and I want all the data first before going on to devise a model. We differ considerably there. But you'll have a better idea of what models could or couldn't work from the perspective of an organic chemist; maybe you could stop us from heading down a wrong path. That was the mistake that Bragg made on proteins: he and his team had the best X-ray data to work from but didn't know enough chemistry to be able to reject models that weren't theoretically plausible. But you and Corey do."
Pauling tilted her head at Franklin. "Dr. Franklin, are you proposing a collaboration?"
Franklin considered for a second. "Yes, Dr. Pauling. I am."
"We'll have to see what Bob and Ray have to say."
"I'm fairly sure that Ray will agree."
"As will Bob. Dr. Franklin, I accept."
They clasped paws.
"Let's find Ray Gosling." Pauling and Franklin began to walk back toward the college. "And Wilkins? If he objects?"
"He is not my employer. And we can always grin at him again." Franklin did now; the sunlight glinted off her teeth.
7 August 1952, Cambridge, UK
nine p.m.
"Do you want another one, Francis?"
Crick shook his head. The two men sat in the Eagle, slumped in their chairs and staring at their empty pint mugs.
"Pauling and Franklin," said Watson, washing down the bitter taste of the words with another mouthful of beer. "We've lost, Francis. I'll bet that they'll announce they've figured out the structure of DNA tomorrow morning."
"Jim, keep a little optimism. How much can they possibly have accomplished in six hours?"
"More than we've accomplished in six months."
"A touch, I do confess." Crick drained his mug. "Wilkins certainly wasn't happy about it. Randall wasted no time puncturing his balloon. If there was any doubt before that Rosalind Franklin is in charge of DNA at King's College there's none now."
"I can't believe that he actually let us in on the news. After that stunt of ours last November I was surprised that he's continued to treat us politely."
"Why not? We're safe to him. We may think we're fools but by now we're probably the only two people in Cambridge who look harmless enough for him to feel secure around. When you talked to him did he say what was going to happen to his own X-ray work?"
"Randall is allowing Wilkins to continue in his own laboratory instead of forcing him to work with Rosie again but it's plain, to Wilkins anyway, that he's basically being kicked aside. Randall's not going to deny Rosie anything she wants now."
Crick bowed his head but then grasped at another straw. "Wilkins told you that Rosie was still interested only in the A form of DNA, correct?"
"That's right. Franklin thinks it's given her the best data and that the B form isn't as informative. In any case Wilkins had been given custody of the B form. That seemed to be fine with Rosie."
"Suppose she's wrong?"
Watson sat up a little straighter. "Do you think it's possible?"
"Why not? It wouldn't be the first time that a scientist didn't see the significance of his - ah, her - own work. If Rosie the Wolf is, shall we say, barking up the wrong tree, it will buy us some time."
"It's a comforting idea, Francis, but right now I don't think that extra time is going to be enough to help us. It hasn't helped us in the past." Watson slouched back into his chair but then something struck him and, sitting bolt upright, he put down his mug with an emphatic thump. "Hold on, Francis. You don't suppose that Wilkins was trying to tell us something?"
"What? Well, aside from yet another horror story about the Rosie the Wolf."
"What does Maurice Wilkins want? Only for the worst, most humiliating thing possible to happen to Rosalind Franklin. What could be more ignominious than if we beat her and the Lioness? We can't do it by ourselves. But Wilkins is going to help us."
"How?"
"He's going to give us more than time. He's going to give us the X-ray data we need."
"But even he admits that his own X-ray pictures aren't nearly as good as Rosie's."
"It's a start anyway. And, like you suggested, maybe Rosie's off the tracks in working so hard on the A form. Maybe the answer's in the B form and the B form is just what Wilkins has been working on."
Crick brightened. "Jim, perhaps life is worth living again." He stood up briskly from his seat. "Shall we offer our assistance to Maurice Wilkins?"
11 August 1952, King's College
eleven a.m.
"I can't let go of the hunch that you're on the wrong track, Rosalind." Pauling and Franklin leaned over a pile of photographic prints spread out on the benchtop. Off to one side, forgotten and cold, lay a plate of half-eaten battered fish.
"I've told you before, Leona. The A form has a higher degree of crystallinity. I'm sure that it's the most promising."
"I trust your professional instinct, Rosalind, but one thing still bothers me. You yourself said that you've only been able to obtain fibres in the A form from calf thymus DNA, correct?"
"That's right."
"Yet DNA from no other source will produce such fibres. Yet both you and Maurice Wilkins have produced B form photographs out of DNA from other sources. Doesn't that trouble you?"
Franklin said nothing for a few moments. "If we accept the premise that DNA comprises one or more linear strands of nucleotides," she said finally, "this does suggest that calf thymus DNA and only calf thymus DNA has a sequence of bases that favours the formation of the A structure."
"Exactly. If the A form is a special case shouldn't we turn our attention to the B form? Consider this also. If DNA is in fact where the gene is to be found - "
"That is not certain, Leona," interjected Franklin with some asperity.
"You're right, it's not certain. But now we have two experiments, Oswald Avery's and Hershey's and Chase's, that both indicate that DNA alone without proteins carries genetic information. I know I'm jumping to conclusions here but I don't think these are coincidental results."
"Very well, let us assume that DNA is the carrier of the gene. What does that imply for you?"
"If DNA works the same way in all organisms, and it makes the most sense to presume that it does, then it also makes the most sense to study the form that has actually been observed in DNA from all organisms. The B form. And what about those unexplained transformations of the A form to the B form that you told me about? Doesn't that suggest that the B form has a more favourable conformation? That's how it would exist in vivo."
Franklin sat back in silence for many seconds. Pauling waited for her. "Leona, you know what I think about 'hunches'. But so many of yours have been correct. Very well, let me get out all of the prints of the B form photographs." Franklin went to her file cabinet and pulled out several folders. "I should mention that these prints are rather old. Dr. Corey may have told you that in April of this year Prof. Randall assigned Wilkins to the B form exclusively. These photographs all date from before then."
"Rosalind," Pauling said as they sorted through the prints, "don't take this the wrong way, but are these the best photographs you have of the B form?" She held up a print. "They're not as distinct as your A form photos."
"To put the matter plainly we haven't been trying as hard on the B form."
"Are you sure these are all you have?"
"I'm afraid so."
Just then Gosling walked into the laboratory, munching a sandwich. "Hello, Prof. Pauling. How have you and Dr. Franklin been getting on?"
"Ray!" said Franklin. "You know you're not supposed to eat in the laboratory."
Gosling looked at the plate on the bench. "Dr. Franklin, you and Prof. Pauling do all the time."
"We, hrrm, we have an excuse. Humans don't have the appetites we furs do."
"No, I suppose we don't." Gosling devoured the last of the sandwich in one mouthful. He went over to the lab bench and looked at the prints spread out on it. "You're sorting through all of the B form photographs, then?"
"Yes. Leona thinks that I haven't been according the B structure as much importance as I should have and she wishes we had clearer photographs of it."
"But we do, Dr. Franklin. One picture, at any rate. Do you remember the fifty-first photograph?"
Franklin looked up, startled. "Fifty-one? Remind me."
"You may remember, that photograph was spoiled when the fibre transformed from A to B unexpectedly. We kept the plate but never made any prints from it.
Light dawned on Franklin. "Photograph 51!" Sweeping all of the prints into one stack she rushed to another cabinet. After searching for a short time she gingerly withdrew a thin sheet of glass. "Ray, put a piece of paper down on the benchtop for me to lay this on."
Franklin laid down the plate and she, Pauling, and Gosling looked at it.
"Rosalind," said Pauling, "this is incredible. This is the best of any of your photographs. Why did you squirrel this away?"
"Squirrel it away? Well, I suppose I should have given it to Maurice Wilkins. I really didn't think it was important, though. It's like Ray said, though: I regarded the exposure as spoiled."
"I don't think it is. We need to follow up on this. Ray, would you mind making a couple of prints from this?"
"Not at all, Dr. Pauling. I'll start at once." He carefully picked the plate up from the table.
"We should airmail a print to Caltech," continued Pauling I want Bob and Verner to see the picture as well. Rosalind, I know you're sick of hearing the word 'helix' but I think we should discuss it again. You favour a two-stranded model, don't you?"
"Yes, Leona, I do, but only very tentatively."
"Let's run with that anyway. What feasible helical two-stranded models could be devised?"
13 August 1952, King's College
eleven a.m.
"Dr. Wilkins," said Crick, "I regret to say that these are not the clearest X-ray diffraction photographs I have seen." Crick, Watson were sitting in Wilkins's laboratory shuffling through a stack of photographic prints. Dismayed, Crick held up another photo. "The best of them hint at a helical structure but I cannot be certain."
"I must concede that Dr. Franklin has improved considerably on our photographic procedure since she came to work here," said Wilkins sorrowfully. His whiskers drooped and his shoulder sagged. "However, she has not been very forthcoming in sharing those improvements with us. I have attempted to duplicate her results but..." He waved a paw at the photographs spread out on the table. "My team has not succeeded."
"What about sweating Ray Gosling?" asked Watson. "Didn't he used to work for you?"
"He did, Dr. Watson. But it would be no use to ask him. He is quite devoted to Rosie now. He will reveal no secrets of hers."
"Well, maybe he'll talk to us. After all we're - "
"I welcome you to try, Dr. Watson, but I don't think that solidarity among fellow humans will be enough to help you. Ray has no trouble whatever working alongside a predator like Rosie."
"Argh!" Watson looked heavenward and paced about the room in frustration. "What a mess! Are you sure you haven't any better pictures?"
"What you see is what we have. And in the case of the B structure I doubt whether Rosie can offer better. She was never much interested in the B form and when she and I had our disagreement in April she seemed glad enough to hand off the B form work to me. I doubt whether she has any B form photographs taken after April...No, wait, I just remembered something." Wilkins's ears perked up. "Ray mentioned that they had taken a couple of B form photographs by accident. Apparently DNA fibres can transform spontaneously from the A to the B form. He said Rosie was rather put out because of it."
"Wait, let me get this straight," Watson said excitedly. "You're saying she might have B form pictures we don't know about?"
"Yes, I suppose that's correct."
"Dr. Wilkins, why didn't you ask Ray to see the pictures he talked about? You're supposed to be working on the B form, they should have given them to you."
"I did ask Ray, as a matter of fact. He said that, since it was he and Rosie who had actually taken the photographs and in the intention of studying the A form, Rosie felt correct in keeping the plates to herself. For record-keeping, Ray said, if nothing else."
"Ridiculous!" Crick exclaimed. "Randall assigned you specifically to study the B form. Those photographs are yours!"
"He had made that arrangement, Crick, but in the current situation...Professor Randall was quite clear that the old arrangement is now outmoded."
"But Franklin must have taken these undisclosed photographs before that happened. What makes you think that they don't still belong to you?"
"Well, when she was here, Rosie said - "
"The hell with Rosie!" Watson cried out. "Maurice, you've got to ask for those pictures!"
Wilkins winced at the unwarranted familiarity. "What can I do? Rosie has never had much patience with me. Now, with John Randall and Leona Pauling in back of her, she's no reason to heed a word I say. And perhaps the photographs are no more useful than mine."
"Sure. I don't buy that, Maurice. Rosie and the Lioness are sitting on gold there, I'm sure of it."
Wilkins shrugged despairingly. "It makes no difference, Dr. Watson. I'm powerless. Frankly, gentlemen, I see no choice for me but to resign my post."
"Don't do that yet, Maurice." Watson paced about a little more. "Maurice - "
"I beg of you, Dr. Watson, to address me by my surname."
"I'm sorry, Dr. Wilkins. In any case, you do believe that the labs at King's College should share their findings with each other?"
"Certainly I do. That is why I found Rosie's proprietary attitude toward her and Ray's work to be so distressing."
"Well, maybe we should help the sharing along a little bit."
Crick turned to stare at Watson in wonder. Wilkins's eyes widened in shock. "Dr. Watson," he said, "Are you implying what I think?"
"Look, Dr. Wilkins, those B form pictures are yours anyway! We'd be doing nothing wrong."
Wilkins looked from Watson to Crick helplessly. "Crick? Do you agree? Isn't this unethical?"
"This is too important a matter. What's the higher ethic here? Doesn't the advancement of science count for more than decorum in the face of one woman's obstructionism? Yes, I agree with Jim."
"It still seems like theft to me, gentlemen."
"It isn't," replied Watson. "How can you steal something that ought to be free? After all..." he went on with a gleam in his eye, "information wants to be free."
The shock did not leave Wilkins's face.
13 August 1952, King's College
four p.m.
"Rosalind! Ray!" Leona Pauling charged into Franklin's laboratory. "Bob sent a telegram. He got your photograph. You should read this." She laid the telegram on the table.
Franklin and Gosling leaned over the piece of yellow paper. Under a Western Union heading were ten words.
SEEN PHOTO. DOUBLE HELIX. VERNER AGREES. MORE TO FOLLOW. COREY.
14 August 1952, King's College
Leona Pauling pawed through a disorganised pile of scratch paper covered with notes and diagrams scribbled in pencil and pen, Pauling's straggling hand and hastily scratched figures competing with Franklin's neat manuscript. Franklin and Gosling looked over Pauling's shoulders at the notes.
"I think it's coming together, Rosalind. A phosphate-sugar backbone on the outside of the helix, yes?
"Undoubtedly. There's no other way to account for the hydration of the fibres."
"So the purine and pyrimidine bases on the inside. They must exist as dimers to explain Chargaff's results. One purine, one pyrimidine. A purine on one strand, a pyrimidine on the other, two strands in all - doesn't it make sense?"
"I agree it's plausible, Leona. Although I'd approached the question differently from you, I had been considering such a double-stranded structure as well. Also, Gulland and Jordan concluded in 1947 that the amine groups on the bases must not be accessible to water. They conducted electrometric titrations of DNA over a range of pH and found that only the phosphate groups could be titrated except at extreme pH values that would probably disrupt the molecule anyway. The bases must be inside."
Pauling looked at Franklin, astonished. "I'm not aware of Gulland and Jordan's at all. You've done your research, Rosalind. If I'd known I could have saved myself and Corey a lot of wasted time."
Franklin looked at Pauling, amused. "I told you, Leona, you can be too reckless for your own good." She adopted her best schoolmasterish tone. "You need to do your homework, Leona."
"I'm sorry, Mizz Franklin," Pauling replied contritely, "I'll behave next time. Anyway...we know the strands can't be bonded covalently. Hydrogen bonding between each purine-pyrimidine pair is the only answer - "
All three of them looked up suddenly when they hear a soft knock on the laboratory door. "Dr. Franklin? Dr. Pauling? It's Maurice Wilkins. I need to talk to you."
"Uncle Maurice!" hissed Franklin.
"Quick!" whispered Pauling, "we have to hide this stuff." She hastily scooped all of the papers into a file folder. "What does he want here?"
"Dr. Franklin, please let me in. Believe me, this is important. There is something you need to know. It's about Crick and Watson."
"What?" exclaimed Franklin. She ran to the door and opened it to find Wilkins, blinking in agitation as he fidgeted with his eyeglasses.
"Dr. Franklin, I must apologise for breaking in on you and Prof. Pauling like this. But I have news you must hear."
Franklin looked severely at Wilkins but, although he trembled a little, he did not look away. "Please, Dr. Franklin, trust me. I only want to help you."
Franklin looked over at Gosling.
"Please let him in, Dr. Franklin. I trust him."
When Franklin turned back to Wilkins her face and voice were softer. "Come in, Dr. Wilkins," she said, opening the door wide for him. "I should be the one to apologise. I've been treating you with scant courtesy lately. Here, sit down. What is it that I should know?"
"Thank you, Dr. Franklin, that's very kind of you. It's Crick and Watson. They...they are planning on trespassing on your laboratory. They hope to find photographs that will help them. Photographs of the DNA B structure."
"My God!" exclaimed Gosling.
"What did you say, Wilkins?" Franklin snarled. Wilkins shrank back.
"They reasoned - forgive me - that I have a right to any B form photographs that you may have taken after April, when Randall arranged the compromise between you and myself."
"You're not party to this, are you?" growled Franklin.
"No! I must confess - I confess that I briefly considered going along with them, Dr. Franklin. I almost accepted their rationalisation. And - well, you know how I've bridled at your keeping your data to yourself."
"Yes," said Franklin. Her teeth still gleamed menacingly but her voice was more level. "But that is not important now. I take it, then, that you thought better of cooperating with them. Out of fear?"
"That's not the reason. Not the important reason. But, yes, I'm afraid of you, Dr. Franklin. You can be...quite intimidating. Sometimes I think you get a bit of fun out of it."
Franklin, taken aback, glanced briefly at Pauling and Gosling before returning to Wilkins. "Is that the impression I give?" All of the anger drained from her face and she looked suddenly tired. "My God, it's true."
Gosling laid a hand on Franklin's shoulder. Wilkins said nothing. Realising how he was fidgeting with his spectacles he resettled them on his nose and regarded Franklin quietly.
Franklin drew a deep breath and sat up straight, looking Wilkins in the face. "Dr. Wilkins, let me begin trying to make amends. You were saying that you decided not to do this thing? Why?"
"Dr. Franklin, I've treated you with scant courtesy myself, calling you 'Rosie' behind your back and attempting to convince myself that you were only hired as an assistant. But I learned differently from John Randall last week. He values your ability highly. And...I've been forced to admit to myself the...insufficiency of my efforts in comparison to yours. I have come to respect your work, Dr. Franklin, and I don't want to see it plagiarised."
"Dr. Wilkins...Dr. Wilkins, I have gravely misjudged you," Franklin smiled and, to her relief, Wilkins managed a shaky smile as well. "But what happened next?"
"I told Watson and Crick that I would have nothing to do with their plan and I'd be damned if I went along with it. They seemed to think it funny when I said that. Crick said something to me, what was it? '"Damned"? That's a silly thing for you to say. You're supposed to be a scientist, Wilkins; you of all people should know that the advance of scientific knowledge has made those religious and moral scruples untenable. "Damned" indeed!' And Watson said that it was people like me who were holding science back."
"Those little creeps!" It was Pauling's turn to bare her fangs. "Dr. Wilkins, did they said how they were going to...obtain the photos?"
"Watson mentioned something about how you didn't lock the door to your laboratory. He'd let himself in once."
"That's right, he did," said Franklin. "I'll not keep the door unlocked now."
"Wait, Rosalind." Pauling stayed her friend. "Maybe we should leave the door unlocked."
"Leona, what are you thinking?"
"It's not enough to lock our work up. We've got to teach those scoundrels never to think about getting their paws on it again."
"'Paws'?"
"Oh, you know what I mean. Let's conduct a little sting operation." Wilkins, Franklin, and Gosling all looked at her, baffled. "Lay a trap for them. Catch them in the act."
Gosling's face lit up. "It's like something out of John Buchan!"
"Ray!" Franklin chided. "This is serious. But I admit that this affair does have its cloak-and-dagger side. What do you propose we do, Leona?"
"Let me think." Pauling knotted her brows. "Dr. Wilkins, would you like to help us?"
"In whatever capacity I can, Prof. Pauling."
"Go back to Crick and Watson and convince them that you've seen the error of your ways, realised how silly your compunctions were, decided you were too afraid that Rosalind and I would rend you limb from limb - whatever it takes to get yourself back into their good graces. It's a trick, I know, and I'll fully understand if you don't want to resort to deceit."
"I do not like it. But this is such an extraordinary situation. I will do it."
"Drop hints that we'll be away from King's College at certain times. Nothing too obvious. Mention events that we might be interested in or places we may be thinking of visiting. And keep an eye open to see if Crick or Watson take advantage of any of these hints."
"I understand."
"But, Leona," Franklin interjected, "we can't be sure that they'll try to get in here at a time of our suggestion. Ray, I dislike having to cage you up in here, but I think it's important that you not leave this laboratory unless absolutely necessary. We need someone on guard here. Here's what you should do...."
20 August 1952, King's College
"Dr. Franklin?"
Watson knocked softly again on the door to Franklin's laboratory, then again more loudly. Gently pushing on the door he found it slightly ajar.
"I think they're out, Francis. They must have gone to the lecture that Wilkins heard they were interested in."
"Wilkins," said Crick contemptuously. "He was certainly in a hurry to get back on our side, wasn't he?"
"He knows what's good for him." They entered the laboratory and closed the door. "Filing cabinets over there. I'll search this one; you search that one."
They began riffling through folders. Little time passed before Crick whispered loudly to Watson. "Jim, I think I've found something. A series of folders containing photographic prints."
"Get them out! Lay them on the bench here." They leafed through the photographs, looking at the numbers written on the papers. "Forty-seven, forty-eight, -nine, fifty...wait, Francis. What's this?" Watson extracted a print and laid it on the table. A caption handwritten at the bottom said simply, "#51, 2 June 1952."
Crick stared at the photograph in wonder. A diffuse halo of diffraction surrounded an cross-shaped pattern of sharply defined parallel lines. "Jim! this is it! It's a perfect helical structure." He shook his head. "And Rosie staged a funeral for the DNA helix! Quick, refile the rest of those. This is what we need, Jim - "
"Gentlemen? May I help you?"
Watson and Crick whirled to see Ray Gosling regarding them placidly from the doorway through which they had just gone.
"Have you lost something?"
"Look, Ray, we can explain,", stammered Watson. "You're one of us, you've got to understand if you give us a moment - "
"I think I understand quite well, gentlemen." Gosling, hearing a soft footfall in the corridor, looked out the doorway to his left. "Ah, Dr. Wilkins, you've arrived! I've been expecting you."
Wilkins appeared in the doorway. "Thank you, Ray. It is good to be working alongside you again." Wilkins turned to the two men still standing, frozen, by the open filing cabinet; his eyes were cold. "I see that they did make the attempt after all."
"Wilkins, you ratted us out," Watson cried, his voice shrill. "That figures, coming from a rodent like you."
"Yes, from a rodent like me," Wilkins replied, his face still impassive but his posture and the flicking of his tail revealing his anger. "I have only done my duty. And Crick? I have decided that certain moral scruples are, in fact, tenable."
"That's nonsense, Wilkins," replied Crick heatedly. "You're only looking out for yourself, betraying us to Rosie and Pauling to save your own skin. And maybe for a share of the credit?"
"Crick, I deserve no credit and do not want any. There are, moreover, more important things to be saved than one's skin. Now, gentlemen," Wilkins continued, "you have exhibited considerable interest in the work of Professor Leona Pauling. You especially, Dr. Watson. You will be glad to know, then, that you will be meeting Prof. Pauling soon." He turned to Gosling. "Shall I summon them, Ray?"
"An excellent idea, Dr. Wilkins."
"Thank you. I'll leave you to entertain our visitors, Ray; I hope you don't mind."
"Not at all, Dr. Wilkins." Wilkins nodded and left, closing the laboratory door; Crick and Watson heard the click of a latch slid into place.
"We decided to install a deadbolt on the outside, gentlemen," Gosling explained. "An extraordinary precaution, I know. Make yourselves comfortable, Dr. Watson, Mr. Crick. It shouldn't be too long a wait but we may as well relax until then. And shut the cabinet, please."
Crick pushed the drawer closed and took a seat, along with Watson, opposite Gosling, never taking their eyes off him. Silence ensued; Watson fidgeted and Crick looked about uncertainty.
"Ray, I have to ask," Watson said after a few minutes, "don't you have trouble working with a wolf like Rosie?"
"I presume you mean Dr. Rosalind Franklin. And no, I do not. She is my friend."
"But she's not human, Ray."
"I was not aware that made any difference, Watson."
"Well...isn't she...menacing at times? God, that one time I was over here, I thought she was going to eat me."
"And you gave her no reason?"
Watson said nothing.
Gosling smiled mirthlessly. "Yes, sometimes Dr. Franklin can be fearsome. She has frightened me once or twice. She strives to gain a better control over her temper. But do I need to tell you what indignities Dr. Franklin has had to suffer throughout her career? Do you know that she cannot dine with the other scientists here because she is a female? She never had to suffer such treatment in Paris. How can I blame her for being fierce? Ferocity has enabled her to survive."
"Ray!" Crick broke in. "I don't understand how you can do this, deliver us over to the tender mercies of a wolf and a lioness. Don't you have any loyalty to your own species, your own kind?"
"'My kind?' Dr. Franklin and Dr. Pauling are my kind. What does species matter? If anyone of us in this wretched mess is not 'my kind' it is you two. Scientists turned housethieves. Have you no shame?"
Just then the sound of the lab door's being unlatched roused the three men. They stood up as the door opened and Wilkins, Pauling, and Franklin entered the laboratory. Wilkins, last to enter, shut the door emphatically behind him.
"Gentlemen?" said Wilkins. "Allow me to introduce Dr. Leona Pauling. Prof. Pauling, these are Francis Crick and Dr. James Watson."
Pauling stepped up to the two men, unsmiling, and held out her paw in greeting. "I've heard so much about you two," she said.
Crick swallowed and shook her paw. Watson followed suit. "It's - it's a pleasure, Dr. Pauling," Watson managed.
"Now. Crick. Watson." Franklin advanced to Pauling's side. "Dr. Wilkins tells me that he and Ray surprised you in the attempt to thieve some of my photographs." She glanced at the table and saw Photograph 51. "One photograph, at least."
"Well, technically," said Watson, "it's a photograph of the B form, so if you think about it, it really belongs to - "
"Watson," Pauling ground out, "Do even you really believe that excuse?"
"Um - "
"Don't think we're the villains here, Lioness," Crick shot back. "Rosie - " Franklin growled and Crick faltered but only momentarily. "Rosie had that photograph for months and did nothing with it - she didn't know the value of what she had. We all saw that 'funeral' notice she sent round. Think of what could have happened if we'd seen it. She held us all back."
Franklin snarled and started forward but Pauling laid a paw on her shoulder. "Not yet, Rosalind," she whispered. Franklin subsided and Pauling returned to Crick. "So you see nothing wrong with robbery?"
"Robbery? You are being melodramatic, Dr. Pauling. Aiding in scientific discovery is not robbery."
"And appropriating another's work?"
"Lioness, " Watson said, "tell your girlfriend that photo isn't hers. It's all of ours." He looked past Pauling and Franklin to see Wilkins sitting quietly behind. Gosling had joined him in a neighbouring seat. "Maurice Wilkins used to agree with us before he decided to sell us out."
"Watson," Wilkins replied levelly, "I make no secret that I wished that Dr. Franklin was freer with sharing her work and that I was unhappy that she didn't. But it was her decision to make, not mine and certainly not yours."
"Rosalind," said Pauling in disgust, "I think we've heard enough from these two. Watson, Crick, you're a disgrace to our profession." She and Franklin stepped towards them. "And now I think it's time for Rosalind and I to show us how we really feel about crooks like you."
"Ray - " Watson grasped at his last straw. "You and Maurice can't just stand by and watch. Stop this!"
"Gentlemen,", replied Wilkins, "unfortunately for you, Ray and I feel the same way that Drs. Pauling and Franklin do. The only difference is that, when it comes to demonstrating those feelings, we humans and rodents lack..." Wilkins adjusted his spectacles and smiled wryly. "...our feline and lupine colleagues' exceptional talent for demonstration."
Pauling and Franklin smiled broadly.
21 August 1952, The Cavendish Laboratory
"I regret to inform you, Sir Lawrence, that I must tender my resignation from the Cavendish."
"Resignation! Whatever for, Crick?"
Crick stood before Sir Lawrence Bragg and John Kendrew in Bragg's office. Behind Crick stood Watson, looking about anxiously.
"I, ah, I have come to see that physics really is the discipline in which I belong. I have often regretted that the war interrupted my graduate work with Professor Andrade and I believe that the time has come for me to get back on track."
"Back on track? Prof. Andrade?" asked Kendrew incredulously. "He had you studying the viscosity of water!"
Crick cleared his throat. "It isn't glamourous work, I concede, but perhaps it needs to be done. Biology may be more exciting but I've learned that I've been regarding it too frivolously. It isn't all fun. Biology can be untidy and, er, dangerous even. All the blood and muscle and fur - "
Bragg squinted at Crick. "Crick, what are you talking about?"
"Ah, nothing, Sir Lawrence, a private joke."
"And you, Watson?" Bragg looked over Crick's shoulder to the flustered young biologist. "Certainly you are not taking up physics as well?"
"N-no, Sir Lawrence. I've become homesick, I guess, and I'd like to continue my work stateside. And also I'm really sorry that Crick and I wasted so much of your time chasing after DNA. It was silly of us and maybe you'll be better off with us gone."
"Is this true, Crick? Do you agree with Watson?"
Crick hesitated before nodding.
Bragg shook his muzzle. "I find this all very baffling, gentlemen, but the decision is yours. I hope, Crick, that you are giving us enough advance notice for you to wrap up your work here."
"Yes, Sir Lawrence."
"Very well. Crick, I am sorry to lose you and I'm sure that John here and Dr. Perutz both feel as I do. Watson, I gather that you are leaving immediately?"
"I'm afraid so, Sir Lawrence. I'm sure that Kendrew will tell you that, er, I've done no work to wrap up."
"All the same I regret to see you go. Gentlemen, I wish you luck with your future endeavours."
"Thank you, Sir Lawrence," replied Crick. He and Watson left Bragg's office.
When they were gone Bragg looked up at Kendrew. The younger scientist had turned to look out the window, tail waving meditatively.
"John?"
"Yes, Sir Lawrence?" replied Kendrew, still facing the window.
"Do you think that Watson was right?"
"As difficult as it is to believe, Sir Lawrence, Watson was, this one time, right about something. We are better off that he is gone, at any rate. And perhaps it is best that Crick is going, as well. A shame. He seemed to have so much promise."
"Perhaps, John, you could talk him into continuing here? With Watson gone Crick may 'get back on track' as he put it."
"I don't think it would be any use. When Crick first came to me with the news there was no dissuading him. His mood was so peculiar...but then I've never quite understood human behaviour."
Bragg sighed. "Well, the deed is done. We shall have to begin looking for another crystallographer to take his place. I say, John, do you suppose we could get Raymond Gosling away from Dr. Franklin?"
Kendrew turned to Bragg and chuckled. "Not much chance of that, Sir Lawrence. Certainly not now. Have you heard the news? The rumour is that, this morning Franklin, Gosling, and Pauling at King's College are readying themselves for publication of a proposed structure of DNA. Pauling's colleague at Caltech is involved as well. They've begun building a molecular model at the College and it's quite elegant, I'm told. No, I don't think that Gosling is about to leave Dr. Franklin's side."
"Well, it was a pleasant thought." Bragg got up from his desk, ears and whiskers drooping. "Another triumph for the Lioness. What was it you said, that Watson was this one time right about something? I suspect that he was right about this other thing as well. About DNA. I was wrong to dismiss it."
"Sir Lawrence, I'm sure you have more than enough discoveries in you. You'll catch the Lioness up some day."
"No, John. I feel it in my bones; I've not much left in me." He looked out the window, leaning on the windowsill, his shoulders sagging, not Sir William Lawrence Bragg now but a greying thylacine wearied with age. After some moments, however, he straightened up. "John, shall we repair to the common room? Perhaps dining on some haemoglobin and myoglobin will restore my energy." Bragg shook his head again. "'Blood and muscle and fur'. What was Crick on about?"
15 September 1952
Nature, October 1952, vol. 45, no. 8
A Proposed Structure for the Nucleic Acids
By R. E. FRANKLIN, L. C. PAULING, R. G. GOSLING and R. B. COREY
Wheatstone Physics Laboratory, King's College, London W. C. 2, England
Gates and Crellin Laboratories of Chemistry, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California
The nucleic acids seem to be comparable in importance to the proteins as constituents of living organisms. There is evidence that they are involved in the processes of cell division and growth and that they are important constituents of viruses as well. An understanding of the molecular structure of the nucleic acids should be of value in the effort to understand the fundamental phenomena of life....
We have now formulated a promising structure by making use of the general principles of molecular structure and of the X-ray diagrams given by highly orientated specimens of sodium thymonucleate at different humidities. The structure is not a vague one but is precisely predicted...
12 October 1962, The California Institute of Technology
twelve-thirty a.m.
When Leona Pauling finished her tale Robert Corey sat back, saying nothing.
"Bob," said Pauling after a few minutes of uneasy silence, "I don't blame you for being disappointed in me."
"Disappointed?" Corey straightened up. "A little, perhaps. After all your self-control...am I right in guessing, Leona, that you and Rosalind enjoyed it just a little too much?"
Pauling slowly nodded. "Yes, Bob. We did. I'm sorry."
"I can understand it, though. This is going to sound funny, Leona, but in a way you and Rosalind were nicer to Crick and Watson than I would have been."
"Nicer? You wouldn't have gored them, I hope?"
"No, nothing like that! But you let them go, after all. People with as few principles as those two don't belong in the sciences. 'Scientific knowledge makes certain moral scruples untenable' - God!" Corey snorted contemptuously. "What happened to Wilkins afterward?"
"He and Rosalind began to get along better after that. I remembered how you wondered that Wilkins got so much favourable mention in our original paper - believe it or not that was Rosalind's doing." Pauling got up from the table, wincing at the creaking of her joints. "Ouch. We're getting old, Bob. I can tell you this for sure: Wilkins stopped acting as though Rosalind was his assistant. And he stopped calling her 'Rosie' all the time. And she stopped calling him 'Uncle Maurice'. He's not a bad guy, really. I'm glad he and Rosalind patched things up."
Corey got up as well, rubbing his eyes. "We are getting old. I'm sure I used to be able to stay up later than this." He regarded his friend speculatively. "You can be pretty warlike for a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Leona. Maybe those two did deserve it but still...don't you think it's all a bit self-contradictory?"
Pauling nodded sadly. "I've thought it more than once. But then maybe that's the point. If we're to be warlike, what is worse, going to war with teeth and claws or going to war with bombs? Bob, as much as I don't like it sometimes, I suppose I'll always be a predator at heart, but at least I am an honest one. I think."
"I think so too, 'Lioness'."
Pauling looked at her friend, astonished for a second, then laughed. "You know, I don't really mind being called that, when it comes down to it. I don't know about you, Bob, but I'm feeling a bit more noctural than usual; I could use some coffee. Hey, I just had a thought. Do you suppose the ASCIT coffeehouse is still open?"
Corey reflexively checked his watch. "I wouldn't know - wait, you don't mean the student-run coffeehouse, do you?"
"That's the one I mean. It's only a short walk away and once we get there we'll warm ourselves with bad coffee and students' admiration. The toast of the South Hovses."
"I don't know, Leona - you know I'm not much of a socialiser."
"I know, Bob. I won't push the point. But...aren't you just a little curious to meet some of the class of 1966? We could maybe even teach them some chemistry."
A grin spread slowly across Corey's face. "A little curious, maybe. Okay, Leona, I'm game - ouch, bad choice of word there. But I'll never like the limelight the way you do, I'm afraid. I'm too serious."
"Don't apologise for being serious, Bob. Without your seriousness I might get nothing done. Shall we go? Here, let me help you." She locked an arm with Corey's. "There. Lean as much as you need to. Do you think you can manage the walk?"
"Ready when you are, Leona."
"Good. Time to hunt for caffeine." They left the Athenaeum together.
Monoceros
Seattle, WA
19 December 2004