The Double Helix

Now in his second year at Cambridge, Watson is living in cold but attractive quarters in Clare College. The college food is awful, and the “poison” of two local restaurants combines, by November, to give him sustained stomach pains (108).

One evening, at Crick’s new home, Odile discusses getting him a connection with a high class boarding house where many pretty French girls come to practice their English. Odile says she’ll set him up for French lessons with Camile Prior, who runs the establishment, so he might be invited to meet her “current crop of French girls” (109).

Back in his cold room, Watson falls asleep, daydreaming about how DNA chains might fit together. He has written on his walls “DNA → RNA → Protein” (11) which reflects the transference of genetic material from sequences of nucleotides in DNA to sequences of amino acid in proteins. But the molecular structure of DNA still alludes them: “We still remained stuck at the same point we were 12 months before” (110).

Occasional tinkering with their model leads to no further advances, and the presence of Peter Pauling in the lab is welcomed as an opportunity to talk about the “comparative virtues of girls from England, the Continent and California” (112) when scientific talk runs aground.