ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Shifting Perspectives on the History of Discovering DNA’s Double Helix Structure

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

English Abstract

The year 2028 will mark the 75th anniversary of three articles published in Nature that revealed the structure of DNA. It will also mark the 70th anniversary of Rosalind Franklin’s death and the 60th anniversary of the publication of James Watson’s provocative memoir, The Double Helix. In anticipation of the fresh public attention such anniversaries may bring, the panelists will reflect on past historical treatment of these events and discuss how we might desire to reorient popular and scholarly accounts.

To date, the history of DNA’s discovery has been told as a series of (auto)biographies, shaped first by Watson’s memoir and then by direct reactions to it. Our panelists will draw on their own biographical approaches to Crick, Franklin, Luria, Perutz, and Watson to propose thoughtful corrections to the dominant narrative. Specifically, how can we help non-specialist audiences to move beyond caricatured portrayals of individual participants (whether dismissive or hagiographic)?

Featuring scientists, science writers, academic historians, and archivists, this international and interdisciplinary roundtable will foster critical engagement with DNA historiography, past and present. How may the current political climate shape 75th-anniversary commemorations, and how might those differ in turn from the histories written for the 50th anniversary? And how might the emergence of newly available primary source materials and new media shape the stories we expect to tell on the 75th anniversary?

Sub Unit

• Roundtable

Chair

• Alistair Sponsel, Science History Institute

Participants

• Matthew Cobb, University of Manchester

• Nathaniel Comfort, Johns Hopkins University

• Angela Creager, Princeton University

• Rena Selya, Cedars-Sinai

Session Organizers

• Michelle DiMeo, Science History Institute

• Ludmila Pollock, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory