Her Hidden Genius by Marie Benedict Will Be One of the Best Book Club Books of 2022

She changed the world with her discovery. Three men took the credit.

 

Science is deeply exciting, for more of us than you would think. Listen to the soundtracks for films like A Beautiful Mind or A Theory of Everything or Good Will Hunting during the moments when the protagonists are in the midst of a discovery. They're thrilling, dazzling, playful music. You feel like you can do anything.

 

Or picture Galileo testifying before the terror of the Inquisition in 1633. After he's forced to save his life by swearing, under oath, that the Earth doesn't revolve around the Sun, he mutters, audibly only to himself: "it does move." That's a story of integrity, defiance, of devotion to the truth. It's maybe even more of a "story," in the sense of fiction, than we think, given the possibility that it didn't actually happen, as per Scientific American.

 

In many of these famous stories from the history of science, and in all the examples above, the heroes are men. Author Marie Benedict has devoted much of her career to celebrating the women left out of them. Her New York Times bestselling-book The Mystery of Mrs.Christie is not about a scientist per se, but about a person who puts those same logical and deductive skills as they have to artistic ends: the mystery writer Agatha Christie, who disappeared for eleven days in 1926 with no explanation, and returned claiming amnesia. The Washington Post called Benedict's book "stunning"; "It's possible," the reviewer writes, "that Benedict has brought to life the most plausible explanation for why Christie disappeared." I won't spoil it for you.

 

Whether telling the story of J.P. Morgan's innovative and brilliant librarian, Bella da Costa Greene, with co-author Victoria Christopher Murray; or of Clementine Churchill, who saved her husband Winston's life in 1909; or of women more directly involved in the natural sciences like actress Hedy Lamarr or "the other Einstein" Mileva Maric (Mileva Einstein by marriage to one "Albert"), Marie Benedict re-centers and develops the life stories of these women in her novels into prose you and your book club want to read.

 

I'll let this excellent synopsis of her latest novel, Her Hidden Genius, about the life of Rosalind Franklin, who helped discover the double-helix structure of DNA, speak for itself:

 

"Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider—brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets. Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture—one more after thousands—she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins who’d rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her. Then it finally happens—the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what unfolds next, Rosalind could have never predicted.
 
Marie Benedict’s powerful new novel shines a light on a woman who sacrificed her life to discover the nature of our very DNA, a woman whose world-changing contributions were hidden by the men around her but whose relentless drive advanced our understanding of humankind."

 

That synopsis comes from Her Hidden Genius' publisher, Sourcebooks Landmark. But there's another passage I love from the novel itself, where Rosalind weighs the joy and duty she feels to her family with those she finds more difficult to explain to them. She is observing her family at dinner:

 

"The candlelight flickers and the china gleams, and everyone seems lit from within by the warmth of the holiday. It is in these moments I wonder--despite my love of and commitment to science--if I have chosen the right track...Do I owe it to all of them to carry on the Franklin traditions in their name?

But then, I watch as these women ensure that their husbands and brothers are well served before they fill their own plates with food and keep constant watch on their needs as the dinner progresses. Even Mamie, who is a force in her political realm, seems to make herself small in the presence of these men--her voice, her opinions, her very being. I cannot lead this life of diminution, even if it is a noble, traditional existence in its way. I am a scientist, first and always, and I must carry on in its name for all of humankind."

 

This kind of scientific defiance is one we hear less about than Galileo's kind. But devotion to truths, internal and external, always takes guts. Read Her Hidden Genius with your book club and get to know a strong individual.

 

Also, you and your book club will never be as interested in X-ray scattering as when Benedict is, miraculously, making it quite interesting.

 

If you enjoyed this article, create a Bookclubz account to stick around for more like it! And make sure you're subscribed to our blog.