British Chemist, Provider of the Key X-Ray Diffraction Evidence for the DNA Double Helix
Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958) was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer who, while working at King’s College London, using her exceedingly skilled and solid experimental grounding in X-ray diffraction imaging, took the clearest DNA-fiber X-ray diffraction photograph to date, of which the image numbered "Photo 51" clearly showed the key diffraction feature of the DNA molecule’s helical structure, providing crucial experimental evidence for later determining the DNA double helix. Yet without her knowledge or consent her colleague Maurice Wilkins privately showed this key photograph to James Watson and Francis Crick, who were doing DNA-structure research at the same time at Cambridge, and Watson and Crick, aided by this key data, accelerated confirming the correctness of the DNA double-helix molecular model they had already built and first published this discovery in 1953. Franklin herself died young of ovarian cancer in 1958 at only thirty-seven, and did not live to the moment in 1962 when Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (Nobel rules do not award posthumously, and whether she should rightly have shared this prize is still an ongoing topic in the history of science). In recent decades, as the relevant historical details have been more fully disclosed and reexamined, scholarship and the public have given increasingly full re-evaluation and attention to the historical injustice of Franklin’s key contribution in the discovery of the DNA double helix not gaining its due recognition and respect.
By her skilled X-ray diffraction technique Franklin took a diffraction image numbered "Photo 51" that clearly showed the key feature of the DNA molecule’s helical structure, thereafter acknowledged as one of the most decisive pieces of experimental evidence in determining the DNA double helix; yet without her knowledge or consent this photograph was privately shown by a colleague to Watson and Crick, who were doing related research at the same time at Cambridge.
Franklin died young of ovarian cancer, possibly related to long exposure to X-rays, in 1958 at only thirty-seven, and did not live to witness the historic moment in 1962 when Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; since Nobel rules explicitly do not award posthumously, her key contribution in the discovery of the DNA double helix long failed to gain public recognition matching her actual effort, and this historical regret is in recent decades being increasingly fully reexamined and remembered by the history of science and the public.
The actual degree of Franklin’s contribution to the discovery of the DNA double helix, and whether the way Watson, Crick, and Wilkins obtained her research data was proper, is an important issue continually discussed in the history of science in recent decades and continually re-evaluated as more historical details are disclosed.
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