by When asked who discovered the shape of DNA, most people would say, “Watson and Crick,” but be unaware of the backstory to the discovery. It wasn’t until after Rosalind Franklin’s death that she received even a fraction of the credit she deserved for her contributions to the discovery of the double helix. What was due to both a series of unfortunate events and a time period which underappreciated women for their intelligence, Rosalind Franklin sunk into the shadows of this famous discovery.
Rosalind Franklin was born July 25th, 1920 in London. At age 18 she enrolled at Newnham college and studied Chemistry. Afterwards she went on to work as an assistant research officer at the British Coal Utilization Research Association where she studied the properties of coal. She later finished he PHD for the “Physical Chemistry of Solid Organic Colloids with Special Reference to Coal.” Next she was appointed to the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l’Etat in Paris, where she worked with x-rays and creating images of crystallized solids for complex unorganized matter. This is where the start of her most important contributions to science began.
After four years in Paris, Franklin returned to London to do work as a research associate at King’s College in the biophysics unit. She began studying DNA structure using X-ray diffraction. After 100 hours of exposure using a machine refined by Franklin herself, she and her student, Raymond Gosling made a huge discovery: the pictures of the DNA they took showed two forms, a dry “A” form and a wet “B” form. The “B” form picture was the first direct photograph showing that DNA consisted of a intertwined strands. This picture later became famously known as Photograph 51, and it suggested the double helix.
At the time Franklin was having disagreements with her colleague, Maurice Wilkins, and this led to them working in isolation rather than together on finding the structure of DNA. Proceeding the capture of Photograph 51, Franklin and Wilkins split and unlike Franklin who was fine working alone, Wilkins went to work at Cambridge with Francis Crick and James Watson. Watson and Crick historically are known for discovering the double helix shape for DNA, but if not for Wilkin’s showing them Franklin’s unpublished X-ray diffraction of DNA, they would have lost the race to Franklin herself. The issue however wasn’t that they discovered it using Franklin’s data, it was that when they discovered it Franklin was severely under recognized for her work.
After Watson and Crick published their findings and won the Nobel Prize, they briefly mentioned the importance of Franklin’s photograph by saying that they were, “stimulated by a general knowledge.” This greatly under represents her contribution. Franklin’s article of her findings was published second under Watson and Crick’s and seemed merely like an article supporting the other two scientists’. At the time if the gender roles were reversed, Franklin’s voice would have been heard loud and clear and she would have received the credit she deserved sooner. Instead because she was a female in the field of science, she was treated like a support character and not someone who could generate ideas and discoveries herself. The time period Franklin live in had little appreciation for women’s intelligence, and compared to the recognition her discovery should have earned, she received almost none.