Hello everyone,
I'm Nidhi Gupta, and this is Women Weekly! In this week of discussing the wonderful women in STEM, we are back with yet another incredible story of Rosalind Franklin, a brilliant crystallographer, and a meticulous researcher, without whose groundbreaking work, Watson and Crick may never have unveiled their comprehensive model of DNA.
After earning her hard-fought doctorate in 1945, Rosalind Franklin accepted a fellowship at King's College in 1951, where she was set to collaborate with Maurice Wilkins on deciphering the structure of DNA. However, a significant misunderstanding marked the beginning of her time there. Franklin believed that she and a graduate student were the only ones assigned to the project, unaware that Wilkins was also meant to be her collaborator. This miscommunication led to a strained relationship between Franklin and Wilkins, a rift that persisted throughout her tenure at King's College. Instead of working together as intended, they ended up pursuing their research in relative isolation.
During her work, Franklin made a groundbreaking discovery: DNA could exist in two forms, wet and dry, each producing distinct structural images. The wet form revealed a helical structure, and after over a year of meticulous analysis, Franklin concluded that both forms featured two helices-a double-helix structure.
Meanwhile, James Watson and Francis Crick, working nearby, were developing a theoretical model of DNA, which Franklin's research had essentially validated. Unbeknownst to her, Wilkins shared her photographs and unpublished data with them, including the now-famous "Photo 51," the crucial evidence confirming the double-helix structure. Watson and Crick used this information to finalize their model and published their findings in Nature that spring.
Franklin was never informed that her work had been used in Watson and Crick's research, nor was she given appropriate credit for her contributions. Despite the pivotal role her data played in their discovery, she remained unacknowledged in their Nobel Prize-winning work.
Franklin's story, however, doesn't end there. Around this time, she moved her fellowship to Birkbeck College, where she began studying the structure of plant viruses, particularly the tobacco mosaic virus. Her expertise was recognized in 1951 when the Royal Institution invited her to create physical models of virus structures for the Brussels World Fair Science Exhibition in 1958, the same year she tragically died of ovarian cancer.
While Franklin's colleagues acknowledged her significant contributions to science, it is perhaps her uncredited role in the discovery of DNA's structure that has garnered the most attention. Most controversially, when Watson, Crick, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work on DNA, none of them acknowledged Franklin's contributions. Her story only came to light when Watson published his memoir, The Double Helix, in which he portrayed Franklin as an uncooperative and defensive scientist who failed to grasp the implications of her own work. This portrayal further overshadowed her contributions, as she was no longer alive to defend herself.
In response, a friend of Franklin's published a book that sought to correct the record, portraying her as a feminist martyr and shining a light on her essential role in the discovery of DNA's structure. While this effort was well-intentioned, it also inadvertently minimized Franklin's identity as a dedicated scientist who was simply doing exceptional work.
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