Despite what Watson said, Rosalind Franklin understood structure of DNA first
link.springer.comI think this is a better article on the topic:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5
It seems like there are several different parts to the discovery of the "structure of DNA" and different people contributed.
1. DNA is helical
2. DNA is a double helix
3. The ACGT copying mechanism
Part 1 was Franklin and Wilkins. Part 3 was Watson and Crick. Part 2 is the part under debate, to what degree was the double helix clear from just Franklin's imaging?
But really, how much does it matter? It seems like the four of them each contributed a lot. The Nobel prize only went to the other three, in large part because Franklin died before it was given out.
It’s just a proxy debate about whether men or women are superior to the other.
Why does attributing any bit of mankind's progress to a specific individual matter? It matters because history is really boring if it's just about groups: we humans love individual human stories.
But, when some male jerk tries to claim they invented X or discovered X, but really a woman did so (something that is not unique to here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_effect) it's good for people to correct the mistake and properly attribute the person who really made the discovery/invention.
So did Franklin provably realize the double-helix structure of DNA first or not? A lot of beating about the bush here but the article stops just short of actually explicitly making the claim it's working so hard to imply, AFAICT...
(edit: should note the HN submission title (at present "Despite what Watson said, Rosalind Franklin understood structure of DNA first") does not actually occur in TFA)
It's hard to say because the helix existed as a theory before it could be verified. From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_molecular_biology#D...
>In 1948, [Linus] Pauling discovered that many proteins included helical (see alpha helix) shapes. Pauling had deduced this structure from X-ray patterns and from attempts to physically model the structures. (Pauling was also later to suggest an incorrect three chain helical DNA structure based on Astbury's data.) Even in the initial diffraction data from DNA by Maurice Wilkins, it was evident that the structure involved helices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA#History
>Franklin told Crick and Watson that the [phosphate] backbones had to be on the outside. Before then, Linus Pauling, and Watson and Crick, had erroneous models with the chains inside and the bases pointing outwards.
The mere idea of a helix is not especially complex and could have existed in the minds of many theorists at the time. Franklin's discovery provided the final piece of the puzzle, but the desire to attribute major scientific discoveries to a single author or team is based on an incorrect interpretation of the scientific process. The real reason that Franklin didn't win the Nobel Prize is because she died:
>In 1962, after Franklin's death, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.[210] Nobel Prizes are awarded only to living recipients. A debate continues about who should receive credit for the discovery.
A student of Franklin, Raymond Gosling, actually took Photo 51. He was not awarded the Prize.
The original title was too long and then when I considered how to edit it I realized that the original title was too obscure for anyone not steeped in that particular literature (“photo 51”)
She totally did. She was the crystallography expert, she understood the meaning of the results immediately. She died and had no one to defend her so W&C were left with the credit, as was normal in the 50s and 60s (and 70s, 80s, 90s, etc).
Discrimination against the dead strikes again. Well, the dead are tired of taking this lying down. Time for the dead to rise up!
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered
No-one should take Watson seriously. He exploited institutional sexism, systemic minimization, and unequal credit distribution to aggrandize his own contribution. It's a good example of why efforts like "DEI" are important - because if you leave things to people in a position of privilege, you get a completely distorted picture.