146 SOUTH CYPRESS LANE

WESTBURY, LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK
    11590

            516-ED 3-6452
12 September 19'79

Francis Crick, Ph.D.
Kieckhefer Research Professor
Salk Institute
San Diego, California

Dear DrXrick:

As one who had long admired you and your work, and had f%xpxct
occasion to interview you and report on your accomplishments
in the 1950% and 1960;s (including one iong auto &de shared
with you and Harriet Taylor-Ephrussi and others en route from
Chicago, where we had all missed a plane connection due to
bedeviling fog and had to reach Purdue for its 100th anniversary
celebration the next day), I have continued to read with great
interest your articles over the years, But& completely taken
aback by your recent comment in September, 1979,-The Sciences,
with respect to your rationale for the l'problems'f of R.
Franklin~

Indeed, I wonder if we are even referring to tne same scientist,
or if you have ever bothered to read Anne Sayre's book. Or, if
having done so, you tnen consider it a gross fabrication from
beginning to end, I assure you I do not and neither do many
of my colleagues. The record speaks for itself.

  I am baffled by your version of the underlying psychodynamics,,
  Are we not all lfvictimsft of the parents we have and the circum-
  stances in which we are unwittingly born? Of course you are
  right about one point: had Franklin been sufficiently prescient

.   to have chosen other parents her life would have been different,
  Had she been born not Jewish but Anglican: not affluent but
  poor{ which always makes it easier for others to be patronizing),
  not female but male, not in an up-tight British society but a
  more liberal one, the going might have been easier.

                                                                           .

As for her not wanting to "share" discoveries with` others --if
indeed that was the case --then she had lots of company.The
number of ftcarefullJ scientists, both male and female, who
have confessed this to me and given me reasons why, is legion.
YOU may be sure that any time a capable woman refuses JJhelpli
from male peers it is for good reason.They have cause to fear
cannibalization of their own results. If thatfs soap opera, so be

filost baffling of all, you apparently consider it a handicap to
be Voo determined to be scientifically sound" and laud shortcuts
for their own sake. Alas, had 1 only had you as an instructor at
RadclEf?e I might have been able to graduate without so much
effort on my part in being thorough and %cieytifically sound."
                      Sincerelv.             _-