If you have ever been in the middle of solving a problem and felt the tug of war within yourself of wanting to give yourself a break to come back to with new eyes and wanting to solve it right now, you will relate to Rosalind in Her Hidden Genius by Marie Benedict. The story of a brilliant scientist who fell in love with science and wanted to move it forward, whether she be seen or not, Her Hidden Genius is a beautiful book that reminds us of the presence of extraordinary people that history has forgotten.
Rosalind Franklin is a young scientist who studies matter using x-rays. She is good at her craft and knows how to work the equipment with a finesse that other scientists find it hard to ignore. There are those in her life who know she is like no other, and then others, like her family, who don’t quite understand what she does. There are many times in the story when people try to confine her by setting boundaries and expectations and every time, she proves them wrong and just keeps going, undeterred. She takes every challenge head on and continues to work on her life’s work which ultimately ends up being the structure of the DNA.
Her Hidden Genius comes at a good time. Vaccines have been an everyday topic in our lives for at least a year now and what better time to learn about an amazing woman who had something to do with it? Rosalind may not be a household name but as it happens with many biological discoveries over the years, the access to that knowledge advances us many times faster. If we did not know the structure of the DNA or the proteins that it comprises, how viruses attack it, how would we have the tools to combat diseases?
It is the passion of scientists like Rosalind Franklin and their thirst to know more that has helped us to get to where we are. She is a hidden genius though because while she did her best to protect her research and get credit for it, her primary goal was to find answers to the aspects of matter and life that she was investigating. She did not let politics affect her and she wasn’t one to take advantage of other people. In a post second world war world, we see the scientific community and its differences through Rosalind’s experiences in Paris and then London. What was the scientist pursuit and the search for answers has somehow become the race between countries and universities to be the first ones to discover something.
I found Her Hidden Genius to be very interesting in balancing these outside expectations to internal drive to know and learn and share. It is not possible to do that without a good support system and I loved the people that Rosalind surrounded herself with. When she could not find the community of scientists she wanted, she made one and was open to people working with her.
There are many things to learn from Rosalind’s life and while she may not have won the Nobel Prize in her short life, that does not make her work any less worthy. She sounds like an amazing role model and I am sure researchers would have been lucky to have her as their mentor. With this book I reminisced my days of being a graduate student and the daydreams of being a professor. Through Rosalind’s eyes, I glimpsed a life I almost could have had while at the same time realising that the world has changed for the better since her time and I would hopefully not face the same challenges she did with her colleagues.
Her Hidden Genius reminded me of Benedict’s earlier book, The Other Einstein, and I am so happy to have read about these wonderful women who had a role to play in shaping the world we live in. While men may have presented a greater challenge and stopped them from being known, the women still persevered and continued to use their brilliancy for moving humanity and its knowledge forward.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Mystery of Mrs. Christie and The Only Woman in the Room.
Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider―brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets.
Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture―one more after thousands―she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins who’d rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her.
Then it finally happens―the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what unfolds next, Rosalind could have never predicted.
Marie Benedict’s powerful new novel shines a light on a woman who sacrificed her life to discover the nature of our very DNA, a woman whose world-changing contributions were hidden by the men around her but whose relentless drive advanced our understanding of humankind.
