The discovery of the double helix model of DNA is among the most significant scientific achievements of the last century. Many people believe all the credit belongs to Watson and Crick. It doesn’t. Lost among the ruins of personality clashes were the contributions of – no surprise here, a woman named Dr. Rosalind Franklin.
In 1962, American biologist James Watson and English physicist Francis Crick won the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. However, there were a host of actors who contributed to the discovery, many of whom remain relatively unknown, including Maurice Wilkins, who shared the Nobel Prize with them.
Nucleic acids, of which DNA is one, are molecules containing a phosphate group, sugar, and a nitrogen-containing base. They were first identified in the late 1860s by Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher. As the years marched on, other scientists, including Phoebus Levene and Erwin Chargaff, revealed additional details about the DNA molecule, including its primary chemical components and how they joined. In 1919, Levene proposed that nucleic acids were composed of a series of nucleotides, each consisting of one of four nitrogen-containing bases, a sugar molecule, and a phosphate group.
In 1944, Oswald Avery and his colleagues at Rockefeller University demonstrated that hereditary units, or genes, are composed of DNA and that finding what the scientific appetites of others:
"This discovery, almost abruptly, appeared to foreshadow a chemistry of heredity and made probable the nucleic acid character of the gene... Avery gave us the first text of a new language, or rather he showed us where to look for it. I resolved to search for this text."
- Erwin Chargaff
With the chemical components of DNA identified, the next step was determining its structure. This determination was critical to how the molecule divides or copies itself during cell division. The question prompted an international race.
On the American side was Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling for his work on chemical bonds. In the United Kingdom, two laboratories vied for the distinction: the lab of Rosalind Franklin, a crystallographer assigned to biological discoveries and her colleague Maurice Wilkins at Kings College, and the Cavendish Laboratory of Watson and Crick in Cambridge, who initially took on the research without formal clearance. Pauling’s version of DNA as a single helix proved erroneous, although Watson felt Pauling was on the cusp and expected him to figure out the puzzle in a mere six weeks. To win the prize, Watson and Crick needed a “miracle” – a picture taken by Dr. Rosalind Franklin and her graduate student, Raymond Gosling, given to Watson without her knowledge or permission by Wilkins. This photo enabled Watson and Crick to eclipse Pauling and Franklin in the race to discover DNA’s structure.
Who Was Dr. Rosalind Franklin?
Born in 1920 to affluent and prominent British Jewish parents, Rosalind distinguished herself academically at a young age. She was athletic and loved hiking and sports, which she enjoyed with friends throughout her short life. (She died at 37 of ovarian cancer, likely due to the radiation exposure from her experiments). Her academic career saw her move from stints in the UK to France (where she perfected her X-ray diffraction techniques) back to the UK at King's before transferring to work under the noted scientist JD Bernal at Birkbeck College, working on the structure of viruses, most notably the tobacco mosaic virus and later polio.
Besides her sojourn in Paris, her work life was bitter and fraught with interpersonal difficulties. (It improved at JD Bernal’s lab; at least he demonstrably respected her work). It didn’t help that in the entire structure of Kings College, there were few other professional women.
The Purloined Picture (Photo 51)
Luckily for Watson and Crick, Wilkins had a loose tongue and spilled some of Rosalind’s work without her knowledge or permission. He handed over a sublimely crisp X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA taken by Dr. Franklin, which provided the Aha moment –without which Watson wouldn’t have gotten far, and certainly not as fast as he did.
Armed with confirmation that the DNA helix was double based on Rosalind’s photo, along with her directions of situating various molecular groups, Watson and Crick could – by trial and error, using cardboard cutouts representing the four bases shift them around till the pieces fit. The rest is history. But, it is crucial to recall that Dr. Franklin’s photo provided the sole experimental evidence confirming Watson and Crick’s hypothetical model.
The Dark Lady of DNA
So where was Rosalind credited in all this? Without her insight, placing the phosphate backbone on the outside, it is likely Pauling would have beat out Watson and Crick. While she did receive a small mention in one of the seminal pieces the two wrote in his version of events, The Double Helix, Watson diminished and insulted Rosalind, pejoratively calling her Rosy, claiming she was hyperemotional and difficult and all but dismissing her seminal contributions—a campaign to minimize her role that he continued as late as 2008.
Franklin and Wilkins did not get on – temperamentally, they pushed the other’s buttons. It is also true that virtually all the staff at King's (except her graduate student, Raymond Gosling) marginalized her. Without collegial support,interaction, and communication integral to scientific advancement, it is not surprising Rosalind’s work on DNA stagnated. This does not minimize her contribution to the field of coal, the tobacco mosaic virus, and graphite crystallography, which were well-recognized in her lifetime. It’s just her contribution to the DNA saga, which was buried.
Alternatively called a "wronged heroine," "feminist icon," and the "Sylvian Plath of molecular biology," some biographers chalk up her difficulties to personality or family issues. The impact of sexism is downplayed or ignored. Notwithstanding the fact that even as late as the 50s and 60s, none of the three Nobel laureates were known to champion women, either as colleagues or students, I have yet to find a reference attributing the acknowledged problems to misogyny – only to Rosalind’s temperament as exaggerated by Watson. Nevertheless, a biography by her friend Anne Sayres was written explicitly to right Watson’s rancid commentary.
The devastating shadow cast by Watson, long, far-reaching, and almost indelible marks could not have been farther from the truth, as attested by other notable scientists with whom she worked.
“As a scientist, Miss Franklin was distinguished by extreme clarity and perfection in everything she undertook. Her photographs are among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken….She did nearly all this work with her own hands. At the same time, she proved to be an admirable director of a research team and inspired those who worked with her to reach the same high standard.” - JD Bernal, Dr. Franklin’s supervisor as she worked on viruses
Rosalind Franklin died before the Nobel Prize was awarded before the history books enshrined Watson and Crick as the architects of life’s code—and long before the scientific community began to reckon with how her brilliance was sidelined, diminished, and quietly appropriated. It’s a warning of how easily science can forget the women on whose shoulders history was built. Let us remember Dr. Rosalind Franklin not as an afterthought but as the rightful co-author of the miraculous structure of the magnificent double helix.
Sources: Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox; Rosalind Franklin and DNA by Anne Sayre
