Andrew Robinson, contributor
In My Sister Rosalind Franklin, Jenifer Glynn offers personal glimpses into the life of the chemist and biologist who helped discover the structure of DNA
MARIE CURIE is an unspoken presence in this touching but unsentimental memoir in which historian Jenifer Glynn tells the story of her older sister, physical chemist and molecular biologist Rosalind Franklin. Both Curie and Franklin enjoyed great family support and were drawn to French culture. Neither wanted to be held up as an example of a successful female scientist. Most significantly of all, perhaps, neither cared for the conventional rewards of science.
The controversy over Franklin's credit for her contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA has inspired many books, but Glynn offers fresh insight into her sister's much-discussed life with family letters. In one, Franklin, newly arrived in Paris as a postgraduate researcher during a post-war, rationed winter, writes to her worried parents in London: "My living conditions are extremely primitive compared with home - though they might well be worse. I wash in a little tin bowl, the only water being from one cold tap in the kitchen at the other end of the flat... I have practically no heating... but I would willingly go more primitive if it were necessary to preserve my freedom." This invites comparison with Curie's reflections on her own Paris student accommodation in her autobiography: "This life, painful from certain points of view, had for all that, a real charm for me. It gave me a very precious sense of liberty and independence."
Unlike Curie, however, Franklin's love of independence made her essentially a lone worker. Although she made a few close friends and relished debating scientific ideas with equals - not least her friend Francis Crick - she was never able to form the kind of argumentative collaboration that was so fruitful for Crick and James Watson. "Rosalind's hates, as well as her friendships, tended to be enduring," her mother admitted. "She was prickly," Glynn writes.
Franklin fell out miserably with her research supervisor Ronald Norrish when she was at the University of Cambridge, and her later clash with King's College London colleague Maurice Wilkins almost certainly deprived her of her rightful share of the credit for decoding the structure of DNA.
The science in this story gets its due with the help of Franklin's later colleague, chemist and biophysicist Aaron Klug, and physiologist Ian Glynn (the author's husband). But it is the lively, atmospheric, personal details, uniquely known to Franklin's family, that make this book more substantial than its brevity would suggest.
Book Information
My Sister Rosalind Franklin
by Jenifer Glynn
Oxford University Press
?14.99/$27.95
Can biotech solve world hunger?
Jonathon Keats, contributor
JOSH SCHONWALD got his first glimpse of the fish cobia in 2006. Schonwald, a freelance journalist, was intrigued by its freakish speed of growth - 10 times faster than the average fish - but what interested him most was a prediction by University of Miami aquaculturist Daniel Benetti, the first person to farm cobia successfully: "Cobia will be the next salmon."
The remark made Schonwald wonder whether there was also a next chicken or papaya that would transform cuisine. In The Taste of Tomorrow, he reports on the future of food, from organic microfarming to genetic engineering to "transdermal nutrient patches" being developed by the military.
Schonwald's accounts of celebrity chefs elevating weeds to haute cuisine are keenly observed, and he is thoroughly engaging when investigating the downfall of Flavr Savr tomatoes or the tribulations of farm-raised fish like cobia. But his uncritical embrace of biotech as an antidote to world hunger is neither original nor persuasive. Unfortunately, he seems a bit too willing to trust every technologist's fantasy.
Book Information
The Taste of Tomorrowby Josh Schonwald
Published by: Harper Collins
?16.99/$25.99
Mysteries of modern physics
Richard Webb, feature editor
PHYSICIST Jim Al-Khalili last year promised to eat his boxer shorts live on TV if neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light. Such neutrinos would be paradoxical for our current conceptions of physics. But as Al-Khalili points out, most apparent paradoxes are no such thing - they are misconceptions that challenge and often improve our understanding of nature.
Why is the night sky dark when it should be filled with an infinite array of stars? Does Einstein's relativity give someone different ages depending on how far and fast they have travelled? How can Schr?dinger's cat be both dead and alive at the same time? Even if you think you know the answers, it is worth dipping in here for a second look. Al-Khalili - chatty, but never condescending - is the ideal guide through these seeming mysteries of modern science. And as for the neutrino "paradox", the boxer shorts look safe.
Book InformationParadox: The nine greatest enigmas in science
by Jim Al-Khalili
Published by: Bantam Press/Broadway
?16.99/$15
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