Rosalind Franklin

The Hidden Helix

She photographed the structure of life—and the record nearly erased her name. Rosalind Franklin & The Hidden Helix is a fierce, exacting portrait of a woman whose X‑ray photographs made the double helix visible and whose refusal to play the politics of science cost her place in the history books.

This is not hagiography or courtroom drama. It is meticulous reporting, intellectual excavation, and moral clarity. You will see Franklin as a scientist first: rigorous, relentless, uncompromising. You will see the culture that folded around her: the rivalries, the assumptions, the invisible rules that decide which careers flourish and which are footnotes. Along the way the book reframes the genesis of molecular biology and asks how credit, gender, and ambition shape what we call truth in science.

Sharp, humane, and unsparing, JD Arden restores Franklin’s voice and work without mythologizing. Read this book to meet the woman behind the image, to understand how scientific breakthroughs are made and recorded, and to reckon with the cost of refusing to play the game of recognition.