Languages for intercultural communication and education

Raymond:
It sounds like it’s much to you.
Franklin:
Sometimes I feel like an archaeologist, breaking into a sealed
tomb. I don’t want to touch anything, I just want to look.
Rosalind Franklin is presented here, as in many popular representations of sci-
entists, as the archetypal observer, content to look, to study and thus to know.
Her impersonality, even coldness, also corresponds to one popular image of
the scientist: she is devoted to her work to the exclusion of ‘normal’ emotions
and relationships. She later condemns the activity of ‘guesswork’ in gendered
terms as ‘boys’ games’, and she further dismisses it in a heated exchange with
Wilkins, whom she catches discussing her work with her lab assistant,
Raymond:
Wilkins:_These_are_very_good,_Raymond,_very_good._I’m_impressed_with_the_amount_of_detail_you’re_getting._What’s_the_humidity_range_Raymond'>Wilkins:
These are very good, Raymond, very good. I’m impressed
with the amount of detail you’re getting. What’s the humidity
range?
Raymond:
Seventy to eighty percent, for the crystalline state. She’s using
concentrated salt solutions to control the humidity. The dif-
ferent forms are showing up much more clearly. She’s calling
them A and B forms.
Wilkins:
Look at that, Raymond. Wouldn’t you say that was a helix? I
said all along it would turn out to have a helical structure.
Franklin
(
Entering
): I wonder why we bother to do experiments.
Wilkins:
What? Rosalind, I – I must congratulate you. What you have
here, surely it could be helical, couldn’t it?
Franklin:
So what do you conclude from that? Because it’s possible it
must exist?
Culture and Written Genres
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