The story of DNA, notably when describing the proposed model about its structure, has to be one of the most fascinating of all time. It was a race. It did happen competitively, giving an insight into science. It was also a close finish. And, at the head of the pack, were two youthful and flamboyant characters who tended to make good stories wherever they went. Apart from all of that this pioneering work which hit the world so dramatically in 1953 was in no sense esoteric. Its elucidation of DNA’s helical arrangement was the most important biological revelation of the 20th century, and it introduced a brand new era of biological thinking. Those three initials are now so well known that no one bothers any longer to spell them out in full.

This book details James Watson with enthusiasm and adulation. He is called a genius, without any ifs or buts. He has been, says the blurb, ‘the most influential scientist of the last half century’. His peculiarities, irritating to some, are straightforwardly seen in this book as intriguing and enlightening aspects of an exciting character. Quotes from Watson, which herald every chapter, therefore serve to advance rather than detract from Watson’s excellence. ‘I know many people, at least when I was young, who thought I was quite unbearable.’ ‘I quickly lose interest in a scientist if I discover that he lacks virtual monomaniacal interest in his work.’ ‘When you get into science, you realize the people above you are not gods; that they’re very human and often they’ll say things which you’ll regard as just wrong. That’s why you want to get close to great people.’

By no means does the book stop short at the events of 50 years ago. The facts of that story, along with Watson’s upbringing, his early enthusiasms, and his move to Cambridge, are completed in the first 76 pages. There are still 200 text pages more to go about everything since then. Watson was only 25 when that structure was portrayed, and he could have sat upon his hands or even felt, as many a pioneer has done (or has been forced to do), that nothing could subsequently equal that early success. But not only has he consistently stirred the pot since then (‘nice is what you do when you have nothing else to offer’), he has kept himself at the forefront of molecular biology.

In 1968 – a particularly busy year – Watson published The Double Helix, he was appointed director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and he married a student 20 years his junior. That best-selling book was no simple telling of a tale. It very nearly became no book at all, being denigrated by many and refused publication by, for example, Harvard. When published it annoyed like anything. It was unkind about Rosalind Franklin whose work helped – to a major degree – Watson’s thinking about DNA (and did not mention that she had died). Even its first sentence stated, when referring to the co-describer of DNA’s shape: ‘I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood.’

When mentioning other individuals relevant to that stage of the DNA story Watson is forever punchy, quirky, and outspoken. On Lawrence Bragg, his boss: ‘The thought never occurred to me (that) I would have contact with this apparent curiosity out of the past.’ On his sister: ‘For years I had sullenly watched Elizabeth being pursued by a series of dull nitwits.’ On Franklin: ‘(She) might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes.’ There were also understandable retorts, as from Crick: ‘(The book) shows such a naive and egotistical view of the subject as to be scarcely credible.’ And as Maurice Wilkins (another key player in the story) wrote: ‘The book is extremely badly written, juvenile, and in bad taste.’

The needs of Cold Spring Harbor, which Watson did not leave until 1993, expanded tremendously under his directorship, and he used his fame most energetically in attempts to raise funds. ‘I think about money all the time,’ he said, and ‘I really like rich people.’ That did not stop the laboratory getting into dire straits financially. He exploited his reputation as widely as possible because, as another scientist stated, ‘He’s not verbally adept. He could never sell cars.’ He had to sell rather more than cars when subsequently launching the human genome project, it needing proper backing in numerous areas as well as grants of cash.

McElheny’s book is stacked with information, possibly too much with excessive fact sometimes getting in the way of a good story. This author is plainly addicted to Nobel Prize winners, and will interrupt any sentence to say that the man in question received such a prize later on. The printed volume (to my eye) is similar, with too many words filling every page. It contains phrases I do not know, such as hot button and pop fly, and things I do know, such as no one’s use of Northumberlandshire or the Sunday Telegraph not existing in that crucial year of 1953. There is a splendid 16-page photographic section, putting a great array of faces to numerous names, as well as 56 pages of ‘Notes’ and 16 pages of a first-class index.

This book’s writer does not mind introducing words crucial to the scientific story without preliminary explanation, such as bases, bonding, chain, axis. He is good at using quotations to sum up some situation, as with the Watson and Crick thinking pre-April 1953: ‘It’s true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold.’ One way and another McElheny has been pursuing Watson for several decades, and is therefore rich with revelation about his undoubted hero. It seems that two books were outstandingly influential in the young Watson’s life: Sinclair Lewis’s Martin Arrowsmith and Erwin Schrödinger’s What is Life?. That does not mean other titles were disregarded. ‘My family had no money but lots of books’, wrote Watson, and this youngster favoured books over toys as Christmas presents even from the age of seven, notably those on birds.

Watson and DNA is a eulogy, of the man, of the heroics of science, of Nobel prize winners (44 are listed in the index) and of the DNA story. That tale is one of the most fascinating scientific escapades of all time, as already indicated, and as will be stated for centuries to come. It just so happens that one of its two kick-starters has lived a life which, without difficulty, demands the very many pages that McElheny has written about him with such energetic praise.

Anthony Smith