Apr 26, 2023 23:10:00

It is pointed out that female scientist Rosalind Franklin was not a victim who was deprived of the honor of discovering the double helix structure of DNA.

In 1962, James Watson and Francis Crick of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and Maurice Wilkins of King's College London were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The award was given in recognition of their '

discovery of the molecular structure of nucleic acids and their importance in signal transmission within the body. ' The X-ray diffraction photograph that led to the award, 'photo 51,' was taken by Rosalind Franklin. There are claims that Franklin lost the honor to Watson and others, but it has become clear that this was not actually the case.

Unravelling DNA's structure: a landmark achievement whose authors were not fairly credited
https://theconversation.com/unravelling-dnas-structure-a-landmark-achievement-whose-authors-were-not-fairly-credited-200404

What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA's structure

https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01313-5

Rosalind Franklin received a high standard of education from an early age, and devoted herself to research at Cambridge University, which had only recently admitted women, earning a doctorate in physical chemistry in 1945. From 1950 she studied X-ray crystallography at King's College London, and in 1953 took the X-ray diffraction photograph 'Photo 51,' which later led to the elucidation of the double helix structure of DNA.

Maurice Wilkins, who was working with Franklin on the structure of DNA, showed this photograph to James Watson and Francis Crick of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, which led to a breakthrough in elucidating the double helix structure of DNA.

While Watson, Crick, and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in 1962, Franklin died of ovarian cancer and focal pneumonia in 1958 at the age of 37. Had she lived, Franklin might have received the Nobel Prize.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 - NobelPrize.org

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1962/summary/

Franklin's friend and author Anne Sayer claims that Watson and Crick stole the honor from Franklin. In 1975, Sayer published a biography of Franklin, claiming that 'Franklin should have won the Nobel Prize' and that 'Watson and Crick stole it from him.'

Thayer's book was written to counter Watson's negative portrayal of Franklin in his 1968 book, The Double Helix, but it did not succeed in overturning the image created by Watson's book.

The play Photograph 51, which premiered in 2015 and stars Nicole Kidman, uses the same plotline of Franklin being robbed of his honor, but in this version, Franklin never realized the value of photography in the first place.

But Professor Mark Roach of the University of Hull believes that if Watson was a relative newcomer to the field, then Franklin, an experienced X-ray crystallographer, must have noticed it.

In fact, there is evidence that Franklin and Wilkins' King's College London team and Watson and Crick's Cavendish Laboratory team at Cambridge worked on an equal footing, with Franklin and others collecting experimental data and Watson and others building structural models based on that data.

This fact was scheduled to be published in the news magazine TIME in 1953, and a draft was prepared, but for some reason it was not published. Watson and Crick did properly state in a paper published in 1954 that Franklin's photograph played an important role in elucidating the double helix structure of DNA.

Journalist Horace Freeland Judson and biographer Brenda Maddux have noted that Franklin has become a 'false heroine' of the double helix.