Introduction and Questions

for The Race for the Double Helix (Film) (1987)

This film shows a dramatization of the interactions among scientists leading up to the discovery in 1953 of the structure of the DNA molecule, the substance that makes up the basic units of inheritance, called genes.

The film opens in 1951, when the young American biologist James D. Watson (1928- ), attending a conference in Italy, is jolted into active pursuit of the structure of DNA by an X-ray diffraction image of a DNA sample presented by the English biophysicist Maurice Wilkins. Since Wilkins’s image reveals the regularity of a crystal, Watson is convinced that DNA might be analyzed by straightforward methods that have previously succeeded in solving the structure of other types of crystals. This conviction carries Watson to England, where the technique of X-ray crystallography is most advanced. However, since various attempts (including an introduction to Watson’s sister) have failed to impress Wilkins, Watson does not join Wilkins at King’s College, London, but instead goes to Cambridge University, where he teams up with Francis Crick (1916- ), another physicist who has turned his attention to problems in biology. The Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, where Watson and Crick work, is headed by Sir Lawrence Bragg (1890-1971), who shared a Nobel Prize in physics with his father in 1915 for their research in X-ray crystallography. The crucial steps in applying the technique of X-ray diffraction to DNA research, however, take place at King’s College, London, through the expertise of Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)-- an expertise she acquired through the study of coal. Although Franklin and Wilkins find it difficult to work together, the possibility of their collaboration heats up the race to discovery, as Watson and Crick see it. They are already worried that the American chemist Linus Pauling (1901-1994) is closing in on a solution.

By the first week of March 1953, Watson and Crick have won the race. In the model they construct that week, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) takes the shape of a spiral staircase (a "double helix," in geometrical terms), with the steps composed of pairs of molecules known as bases, and the formed by chains of sugar and phosphate molecules. Because the same types of bases always pair together (adenine with thymine, guanine with cytosine), one half of the DNA staircase (the sequence of bases attached to either sugar-phosphate chain) contains enough information to reproduce the entire structure (the basis for biological reproduction). Moreover, the sequence of bases along the sugar-phosphate chain makes up a code of genetic information. An alphabet of only four letters, A, T, G, C (the initial letters of the names of the bases), produces enough variations in genetic information to account for the great diversity of all living things, including human beings.

Although he did not win the race for the double helix, Linus Pauling won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1954 for his work on the nature of chemical bonding. In 1962 (the same year Pauling won the Nobel peace prize for his advocacy of nuclear weapons control), Watson, Crick and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their work on the structure of DNA. Rosalind Franklin was not considered for that prize because the rules require that recipients be living at the time of the award, and Franklin had died four years earlier.

The Race for the Double Helix (alternate title: Life Story) was produced and directed for BBC Television by Mick Jackson. Cast: Jeff Goldblum (Jim Watson); Tim Pigott-Smith (Francis Crick); Alan Howard (Maurice Wilkins); Juliet Stevenson (Rosalind Franklin).

Questions

1. In what ways does the discovery of the structure of DNA illustrate the patterns of discovery developed by Kuhn?

2. In what ways does the film’s account of events differ or present possible counter-examples to Kuhn’s claims?

3. What role do knowledge and belief play in the scientific discovery?

4. Does the film suggest there is one way of doing science or several ways? If there are several, how do they differ? What about the reasons for doing science? What reasons seem to motivate different scientists portrayed in the film?

5. How do differences in age, gender, and/or nationality play a role in the lives of the scientists portrayed in the film?

6. What does this example of a scientific discovery suggest about the importance of combining the perspectives of different disciplines in an effort to solve a problem?

7. Does the film’s objective of presenting an exciting, coherent narrative structure falsify the actual events leading up to the discovery? Explain.

Ancillary Reading

Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (New York, 1988).

Anne Sayre, Rosalind Franklin and DNA (New York, 1975).

James D. Watson, The Double Helix (New York, 1968).

James D. Watson and Francis Crick, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid," Nature 171 (2 April 1953).

Modified from http://www.skidmore.edu/~mmarx/LS12000/helixintro.htm