Only Rosalind

Fourteen years. That’s how long I’ve been studying biology, bouncing from town to town, country to country, putting up with the Norrishes and Wilkins of the world. Fourteen years of perfecting x-ray crystallography and x-ray diffraction and making incredible advancements in the science of coal and helping England in the war. 

But despite my efforts my name is still only a collection of sounds that don’t mean much. It’s not in a book of “Greatest Scientists of the Twentieth Century” and it’s not heard in classrooms. All these years, I’ve only been Rosalind, with her silly interest in x-rays and rocks. 

Those fourteen years have led to this. I slip my glass slide under the x-ray tube and ensure the micro-camera is well in place. I start the diffraction process, an underwhelming click of a button without even a flash of light, and wait. Then a dark image burns itself into the film, bleeding out from the sides, and I worry it will be another wasted photograph of the dark like the other fifty before it. 

Until I see an oval. 

How curious. A black, skinny oval becomes apparent on the film. Then another, directly opposite the first, until I see four of them, evenly spaced like the corners of a rectangle. The image sears itself further into view, toward the center, until it finally reveals a cross made of these slim ovals. I feel nothing at all, even the fingers holding the photograph have gone numb.

I’ve done it. I’ve captured a picture of DNA. 

Feeling rushes back into my extremities and each limb begins to tremble. I shuffle away from my station, shrugging off my white coat and hanging it near the door as I distractedly stagger into the hall, my eyes glued to the photo in my hand. I settle myself slowly into an armchair near the phone, still focused on the image as I pick up the receiver. My hand only just brushes the plastic handle when someone speaks to me.

“What’s this, Ros?” 

I glance up. It’s Maurice, a colleague who works alongside me in the college laboratories. He knows about my research with x-ray crystallography and I trust him very much. 

“I’ve just taken a photograph of DNA,” I breathe, revealing the image to him.

He picks it up, his eyes widening. He turns it about in his hands, studying it very carefully for several moments. At last, he says, “Are you sure? I mean, you’re sure this isn’t a photograph of some bacteria or machine part?”

“X-ray diffraction doesn’t work like that. It’s too small to be bacteria. That’s…that’s DNA, I’m confident,” I say, swallowing hard. “I was going to call the publisher. We…we have to get this out–”

“Shh, relax,” he murmurs, sitting in the armchair adjacent to mine. “I don’t think that’s very wise.” I gaze at him, unsure what to say. He continues, “This sort of thing should be kept under wraps for a while, just until we can study it thoroughly.”

“Right. I suppose you’re right,” I say through an exhale. “I’ll study it then. To make sure.”

“Good. The world of science will be very pleased,” he smiles proudly, handing the photograph back to me. 

***

For the next months I know nothing but my lab. I arrive in the morning and leave in the evening only when it’s dark, desperate to uncover the reason for this mysterious shape I’ve photographed. I take dozens more pictures, eat and sleep and bathe in the lab, spend hours staring at that fifty-first photograph as if hoping that if I stared at it long enough it would reveal its secret to me. I miss the summer and emerge from my frenzy halfway through winter when I realize I’m not getting anywhere. 

The picture is puzzling. I step out of the science building at last and challenge myself to spend the cold afternoon with my attention elsewhere. I walk along the frozen paths of King's College until I’m met with the town streets, where I breathe carefully and walk slowly. It’s January, just after Christmas, but some decorations are still up in the shop windows and upon lampposts. I see a particularly festive window belonging to a bakery shop, so I step inside. 

“Welcome, miss,” the baker greets from behind his counter, where he’s rolling a long snake of pastry dough. 

“Hello,” I say kindly back. “What are you making?”

“Pinwheels,” he says, raising the snake vertically and curling it into a spiral pattern with the help of gravity. It falls into a lovely coil, like a snail shell.

“Lovely.” I smile. “And those are the same?” I ask, gesturing to a thicker pastry with a similar pattern.

“A bit. I’ll show you how I make those,” he says, now readying two snakes of dough and raising them up, before making a flicking motion and causing the strands to wrap around themselves. For a moment, a split second, I see my photograph.

“Do that again,” I demand immediately, causing the baker to startle slightly. 

He does. The strands twist around each other, somehow opposite and somehow one in the same. I practically climb over the counter to watch as closely as I can, which I realize must have been rather intense and off-putting for the baker. I laugh, my eyes wide. 

“That’s perfect!” I exclaim. “That’s the shape! That’s what it means! I’ll–I’ll buy a whole box later, just–yes, thank you!”

I rush out of the shop and nearly race back to the college. I burst into my lab, tugging my coat on and scooping up my stack of photographs. I rifle through them like a maniac, searching for that one. And then suddenly I’m through the stack. I furrow my brow and pick them all up again, looking at each one carefully. It’s not there. 

Chest heaving, stomach clenched, I tear apart my lab. Every paper is accounted for, every single bit and bobbin organized, except for that photo. What the hell could I have done with it? Did I take it somewhere to study and leave it behind? I’d have an easier time abandoning my own child. 

“Maurice!” I cry into the telephone after hours of searching. “Have you seen my photograph? It’s labelled ‘fifty-one’. You got that? ‘Fifty–’”

“Relax, Ros. I took it to some colleagues of mine at Cambridge,” he answers me calmly. 

My stomach sinks like a stone. “What?” I breathe. “But you said to keep it under wraps. I don’t understand. Why–?”

“I thought about it and I realized that this needed to be studied,” he says simply. 

An intense venom rests itself behind my tongue, waiting to be used. My eyes burn with effort while I force back tears of frustration. How could he do this? Is it normal for colleagues to steal each other’s work behind their backs? In my experience, certainly not. I find that I do not have any kind words to say to him, so I return the receiver to the wall without another word. 

I breathe out, wiping my eyes, and calmly return to my lab. I’d made copies of the photo, of course, so I pick them up and gaze at them. I see the photograph clearly for the first time: a helix with a copy of itself, twisting in an endless pattern. I think bitterly of what Wilkins might do with my work, what it might earn him. That he may find his name in the anthologies and journals, and I’ll still be silly Rosalind who spent her life taking useless photographs, forgotten after her death. A journey that required my lifetime, now without a destination. 

***

I sit at the table, sipping coffee alongside a plate of pinwheel pastries. My attention is focused on the journal in front of me, staring at my photograph. I’m credited in the caption as the photographer, but that’s the only space in which my name appears. Watson and Crick are now the fathers of DNA, the praised and renowned scientists who bravely dedicated years to the discovery of the double-helix structure, and I sit here in my father’s home, with nothing better to do than eat pastries and stare bitterly. 

Ten years later, they will receive a Nobel Prize for their efforts, and I will be dead. Six years after that, the rich and recognized Watson will guiltily admit in one of his great memoirs that I had made a significant contribution to the work. It will be too late. Nobel Prizes are not offered posthumously. I will still have gained nothing for my work.  

For years my grave will say “Loved Eldest Daughter” to summarize my life. It will sit cold and unassuming in my family’s burial plot. For years I’ll be someone’s, not someone. Thirty-two years after my death, someone will carve words into my gravestone. They will say, “Scientist. Her research and discoveries on viruses remain of lasting benefit to mankind,” and suddenly those fourteen years won’t seem so long.