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by Stephen Press
Hometown Weekly Staff
Sam Wolfield, a sophomore at Needham High School, exhibits the calm, studious demeanor of a scientist as he attempts to sum up his achievement. "It's a proud accomplishment," he says dryly, barely cracking a smile. Surely, he's just playing it cool. After all, Sam has recently learned he's been named a finalist in The Kenneth E. Behring National History Day Contest. On June 12, he'll hop a bus with one of his teachers to College Park, MD, where he'll compete for prizes at the national level.
Sam's project, a website about Rosalind Franklin, an integral, though criminally overlooked figure in the discovery of DNA's helical structure, was judged to be one of the best two in the Commonwealth. For Sam, part of what drove him was a desire to see history's wrong righted - to see Franklin recognized for her brilliant research.
"I think that's a big part of it, because she had died in her thirties and no one had ever really heard about her," he says. "She was only a footnote. She never got the credit she was due."
When he's asked to explain the matter, Sam speaks more freely and passionately than before:
"There are two different forms of DNA, the crystalline form and then the natural form. When they were doing X-ray defractions of the DNA, they had both forms in their defractions, so they couldn't make heads or tails of anything. Then when she separated them out, it was a lot easier to try and tell the shape of the DNA. Her best defracation, which was called 'Photo 51,' was basically the perfect 'X' pattern that showed DNA was helical."
Madeline Wolfield, Sam's mother, proudly stands close by as her son displays an uncommon understanding of such an obscure subject.
"My husband and I were thrilled," she says of his honor. "But when he showed us his website, we knew he had done amazing work, an amazing job. It really gave him an opportunity to meld his two favorite subjects in school, which are science and history. It's just gratifying that other people thought he did an amazing job. It's an incredible achievement to be one of 100 kids in the country in his category chosen to go to Nationals, so we're really proud of him."
Reminded that in the last few weeks, Needham High has had two of its students - he and Dianne Lee, a Presidential Scholar - nationally recognized for their scholastic efforts, Sam chuckles before commenting. "I guess we're
