The sad thing about this is that, despite this clarification, in schools, it'll still be taught as a Watson/Crick discovery, not Franklin, just as the telephone is still taught as a Bell invention rather than something he stole while working at the patent office and Edison gets credit for the light bulb even though he was a johnny-come-lately. Once these things are in print, it's hard to get them changed. I remember once in school being taught something (don't remember what it was) and sticking my hand up to say, "but that's not right. We now know X to be true." The teacher said, "But it's that way in the book, so that's how it'll be on your exams."
Wilkins produced the initial samples, trained Gosling (who took photo 51) and then had his samples and assistant (Gosling) taken when the high flying Franklin was hired.
Wilkins took lower quality photos before Franklin was even in the lab, and showed them to Watson at a conference.
Yes, Franklin built a way better x-ray camera.
But she was also allegedly pretty horrid to Wilkins. She mocked Wilkins as a "middle class" idiot and refused to share her data with him (Gosling did show Wilkins photo 51 when ordered by higher ups, which Gosling had taken, we don't talk about Gosling because PhD students don't get credit right?).
Franklin held a funeral for the double helix, because I guess she thought Wilkins was an idiot to suggest DNA was a double helix.
Yeah, Wilkins was a little bit rude, giving as little credit to her as possible. But if some privileged upper-class rockstar moves into your lab, tries to freeze you out, mocks you for your theory, then you figure out you can prove your theory is correct (using a photo your former assistant took using the rockstar's camera, and some help from a couple of other researchers) then yeah ... are you really going out of your way to praise them, even if maybe they could have eventually figured it out?
Wilkins was immediately convinced of helix from his earlier work; double helix was only arrived at later by Franklin (and Crick interpreting Franklin's work) because they were the only ones in this group who understood x-ray diffraction math. She mocked him after her own helix images were taken, because she believed the more complicated images of the A-DNA form (well beyond his skillset) held all the real secrets.
Attribution and glory-sharing is a tricky thing. The discovery was piecemeal and has a lot of names attached. For a lot of reasons, some her own, some the sexist institution she was part of, she did not publish first. Watson and Crick did. Even though they were privy to what she knew, and had seen Photo 51, and only briefly reference Wilkins/Franklin from KCL that gave them key insights... they published first.
I believe Franklin would have shared the Nobel prize with Watson and Crick had she not died before she could be nominated. The Nobel committee just don't offer posthumous prizes. That compounds the problem of Watson and KCL minimising her contribution. But if she had survived, I'm confident there would've been a huge dust-up as to whether she or Wilkins got third spot on the Nobel prize. As she was already dead before the DNA structure was confirmed, history couldn't go that way.
It's misattribution of causality. She wasn't nominated because she was dead and she suffered academic sexism, chauvinism and skullduggery, especially from Watson. It's not that she wasn't nominated because of academic sexism, chauvinism and skullduggery.
Arnold's principle (after Vladimir Arnold) says that no invention is attributed correctly to its true inventor. The principle applies to itself, of course.
Bell didn’t steal the invention. There were many people working on it at the same time, but he and Watson were the first to actually a) patent it, and b) demonstrate it functionally.
While I wouldn't go as far as claiming Bell stole the patent, that he filed his patent within hours of Elisha Grey is so fortuitous a coinicidence that one can't help but wonder if it weren't a coincidence.
I read through these once. For those where I've been in the wrong, it's two patterns repeating. Either that I learned something in school / as a kid, and it was "correct" at the time but now we know better. Or that the common belief has just always been wrong.
Examples include that "glass is liquid", "bulls hate red", "touching a baby bird will make the mother abandon it", "you only taste salt on part X of your tongue" etc.
The fact is that after taking that image, she spent some 8+ months on a completely different research direction that yielded no results (A-DNA). She was not the first to take a picture showing helical structure (Wilkins' lab hired her after they had done this, and Pauling inferred helix from even earlier cruder images). She was the last person in the group to be convinced that A-DNA was also helical, and that it was time to start building molecular models. She is on the record mocking Wilkins for his non-specialist confidence in the simple helical structure, during the period she had Photo 51. She was yet to even attempt to model how base pairs (complimentary or otherwise) would fit together in the anti-parallel double helix phosphates-outside model she had by the time they published.
While it's fair to say that she contributed more (EDIT: Crick actually developed a lot of the mathematical theory which Franklin herself used so I'm not decided) than Watson/Crick (phosphates on the outside, precise helix and double helix measurements), and that her contributions were minimized at the time, she did not solve the DNA structure herself, and she certainly didn't do it alone. There are many others who made large contributions to this project and whose names are totally unknown to the average person. She was acknowledged by Watson/Crick and her work was published in the same issue of Nature - nobody could be unaware of her contributions. Watson later tried to rewrite history with himself at the center and was widely panned, even at the time.
There's an awful lot or Franklin in print and the like, maybe more than she really deserves as it seems to have become the most famous story of alleged sex discrimination in science.
If I read Franklin's notes this establishes that she did in fact conceive of a double helix and base complementarity in the center (I can't see if she also recognized it was antiparallel).
That's the first actual evidence I've seen (I am a DNA nerd and have been trying to understand what her contribution to the intellectual discovery of DNA's double-helix antiparalel).
I would need to go back to Judson's book (Eighth Day of Creation) and see if he actually missed this.
I happen to be reading Judson right now. Quoting from it here:
> It is easy to feel great sympathy with Franklin. The fact remains that she never made the inductive leap... before she learned about the model proposed by Watson and Crick, she and Gosling began to draft a paper to state their conclusions so far about the B structure. That draft also survived among Franklin’s papers. It was vigorous, clear, and limited. Klug and I went over it one afternoon in his office. “You see, she was lacking one final step,” Klug said. “Well, two steps. What she missed was the presence of the dyad—the symmetry of the molecule. Which Francis had seen immediately from her information about the space group. And even though her notes earlier showed that she knew about Chargaff’s ratios, she never got to the base pairing.”
Seems like Judson accepts Klug's version of the story: she understood that the structure was helical, but not that it was doubled or base-pair. There's also a final essay at the end of the book "In defence of Rosalind Franklin" which basically reiterates this:
"She had not perceived that the backbones run in opposite directions. She had not started modelling the B form as a double helix and so had yet even to encounter the problem of fitting the bases inside."
I'm a bit confused about this discussion about whether or not she conceived of a double helix structure as this PBS Nova documentary on DNA includes a scene where they show her notes that have her muse about the possibility of a double or triple helix structure.[0]
As for base complementarity it seems likely that she would have made that leap from everything else that she knew of at the time, but I'm no expert on this subject and have not read her notes.
The new paper does not challenge Watson and Crick’s achievement. Their model of DNA, rushed out in a brief article in Nature after Watson caught his glimpse of photograph 51, went well beyond Franklin’s understanding. [Watson and Crick's model's] two strands running in opposite directions and zipperlike arrangement of complementary base pairs explained how the molecule could carry genetic information and be copied each time a cell divides. “The fact that it was a helix, you know, was not the most exciting aspect of this structure,” says Soraya de Chadarevian, a science historian at the University of California, Los Angeles. Indeed, by 1952, other researchers striving to make sense of the molecule also suspected it was helical. [for example Pauling, who at one point thought DNA might be an alpha helix-like structure]
I think we already knew Franklin recognized the fibre diffraction was consistent with a helix (IIRC, Stokes had already shown that a helix would form a cross shape in a diffraction in 1950, and I believe Franklin was working with him). That wasn't the actual detail that I think is controversial.
Instead, this new paper and several previous papers based on Franklin's notes:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10739-026-09866-7 (the paper referenced in the article) -> Franklin's notes say "“evidence for [a] 2-chain […] helix.”Footnote21" where Footnote 21 is Notebook entry for 10 February 1953 (FRKN 1/1, Franklin Papers). The images of her notes are here: https://www.jessiemillsauthor.com/journalism/photo-49-the-x-... (I can't read her handwriting, so I'm taking the 2-chain helix on faith.
Also, this article https://philpapers.org/archive/NIETNC-3.pdf interprets her notes to say she recognized the complementary bases: " Franklin’s notebook entry of January 19, 1953—“diads in A. Chargaff data”
(Klug index, FRKN 1/1, p. 3)—demonstrates that she had inferred complementary base pairing from the conjunction of Chargaff’s ratios and the crystallographic dyad symmetry, eleven days before Watson saw Photo 51.
So based on the above interpretation, I would probably update my understanding from:
1) Gosling collected the fibre diffraction data and Franklin recognized both that it was a helix, and that the bases were on the inside and complementary.
2) Watson and Crick deduced that DNA formed a double helix with antiparallel chains.
And now I would update it to:
1) Gosling collected the fibre diffraction data and Franklin recognized both that it was a double helix, and that the bases were on the inside and complementary. At that point I think she would have recognized the chains were antiparallel due to dyad symmetry, right?)
2) Watson and Crick deduced that DNA formed a double helix with antiparallel chains.
That's the key bit- I had not previously seen any evidence that Franklin knew it was a double helix or that she knew about the complementary bases. And since this is an area that generates a lot of strong emotions, and there's a lot of noise, I'd like to see her exact text, but I simply cannot read her handwriting.
From that, it's hard to say she wasn't thinking of a double helix. Combined with the fact that she had to correct W&C on the base placement, and knew about base complementary, it suggests that she did conceive of a bit more than Judson and Klug credited her for (which is odd given Klug's comments and conclusions).
In my mind this doesn't actually meet the final necessary criteria for full credit for the B-DNA double helical structure with base complementarity details, nor the recognition of its implications, it mainly changes some internal bits of the story.
I'd like someone with more knowledge to comment on that paper - I see a lot of red flags and can't make much sense of it.
The images seem to contain commentary on Klug's commentary on Franklins work, in the same color?? The text contradicts the timelines that it cites from Klug, the paper focuses on some seemingly irrelevant details, and makes claims about the dispute I've never heard before (for example that phosphates on the outside was stolen - years after she published that finding at a conference in which Watson was in the audience). It also suggests that Klug - a fierce advocate for Franklin's legacy - was also trying to diminish her work.
Clickbait headline which misframes the controversy, to nobody's benefit.
Helical DNA was the strongest candidate by 51, in part because earlier and cruder X-ray diffraction images had existed for some time (10+ years) and were suggestive of this structure. All of the scientists in question, and many others, collaborated on that possibility at that time, and long before 'Photo 51'. It was not a surprise, but rather the focus of their work.
Franklin was making the famous improved images with the explicit intent of revealing or disproving the helical structure. She and her lab produced the most definitive evidence for helical B-DNA (Photo 51) in early 52, but during 52 the conclusion was still a matter of debate (and humor) amongst them - in particular Franklin was not convinced that A-DNA was helical. From Wiki:
> In July 1952, as a practical joke on Wilkins (who frequently expressed his view that both forms of DNA were helical), Franklin and Gosling produced a funeral notice regretting the 'death' of helical A-DNA
This left the molecular structure and number of strands as open questions. Triple helix models had been attempted by Pauling, Watson and Crick at that time. Watson and Crick though were first to develop the successful double helix model with antiparallel base pairs in early 1953. It is likely that Franklin had also come to the conclusion that DNA was a double helix by this time (based on her draft notes + circumstantial evidence) but she did not do so in total isolation, nor did she complete the final molecular part of the puzzle (though she had worked on it).
TL;DR DNA structure was not a eureka moment spurred by a single breakthrough thought or piece of evidence; many scientists collaborated on eliminating various likely possibilities for years until the correct model was found.
Indeed. Brenda Maddox's wonderful biography of Franklin already goes into this in depth, including discussing her notebooks, so I'm not sure what is actually new here.
Franklin was tackling the problem scientifically, with a view that you can only prove or disprove with empirical evidence, and publishing an unsupported model was unscientific. Watson was the tech bro, stealing data and coming up with an untested, unverified model. (Crick was mostly a nice guy hanging with the wrong crowd.)
The massive irony is that Franklin published her crystallographic photos and data in support of the Watson-Crick model, which had of course been derived from her images in the first place, without her knowledge.
I think that still simplifies a bit too much. Wilkins studied DNA structure with several methods from 1948-50 but when his best results were from a modern x-ray diffraction image, Franklin (an expert in the field) was hired to essentially take over the project (which he resented).
The first images that Watson saw were actually taken before Franklin joined the team. Better images (and her analysis of them) were some of the most valuable pieces of evidence for narrowing down the possible structures (e.g. they disproved models by Pauling/Watson/Crick) - but by late 1952 Wilkins felt they had enough data and ought to focus on modelling. Franklin (who certainly had an ego of her own) insisted on continuing with her approach - she was an expert in these techniques after all and was making real progress.
Wilkins (who had been had been open with his own inconclusive results), eventually went over her head and showed the famous images to Watson and Crick. He felt they were sufficient to guide the model building and he was frustrated that Franklin had been withholding them while pursuing the wrong research directions. Franklin mocked him for his views at time, but Wilkins was somewhat vindicated.
I don't think this should be considered ironic, or that the image held all the answers, or that the discovery was stolen. Ultimately her work played exactly the role it was intended to, eliminating candidate models. The subsequent diminishment of that role is the real controversy, and most involved later walked back some of their statements.
Slightly off topic, but I was initially confused by the image, since it looked like an X-shaped chromosome to me, rather than the orders of magnitude smaller DNA strand. This image explains the structure depicted in photo-51[0]
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.
> But really, how much does it matter? It seems like the four of them each contributed a lot.
In today's standards, or at least what I am used to, Franklin and Wilkins should be co-authors of the "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" Watson & Crick paper. But they only got this note at the end: "We have also been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr. M. H. F. Wilkins, Dr. R. E. Franklin", not even talking about the image but giving the impression that they had an unimportant talk while having an informal tea.
But they (W & C) include this text: "The previously published X-ray data on deoxyribose nucleic acid are insufficient for a rigorous test of our structure. So far as we can tell, it is roughly compatible with the experimental data, but it must be regarded as unproved until it has been checked against more exact result". They suck for this: they could ask Wilkins & Franklin to include the X-ray that is sufficient to base their claims, add them as authors, and make a better article. But they choose to "be stimulated" by the perfect picture 51 and claim ignorance afterwards.
> 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.
A Nobel can only be split among 3. Agree with the rest of your post.
Other comments suggest that Franklin would have eventually gotten there on her own. Her work was key to the discovery as we know it, which wouldn't have happened without it. To me, that's the whole story.
Specifically the antiparallel base matching was the important bit, agreed, but minor nitpick. The first alpha helix wasn't solved until 1951, so one year earlier. Their ubiquity was very novel.
Watson used his credibility to advance unscientific eugenics theories for years. The impropriety suggested by the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the structure of DNA serves to undermine the arguments of people who are liable to think, "Well, he was smart enough to make one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time, how could he get race theory wrong?".
Watson's shadow would not extend so far if Franklin's role were known - not just because it would have diminished his, but also because her presence would have undermined attitudes that marginalized non-white-men, in the field of science and beyond. It matters a great deal, unfortunately. And it's a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people who have their pride wrapped up in what he represents.
> Science historian Alistair Sponsel of the Science History Institute and crystallographer Brian Sutton of KCL argue Franklin knew the earlier photo had revealed a helix—the epiphany Watson claimed for himself—and that is precisely why she made a second, more refined version, photograph 51.
It was Watson and Crick who discovered the double helix, even if Franklin did write something down about a single helix from a previous photo that they didn't read.
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)
>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.
>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.
Pauling would certainly figure out that too before Watson and Crick but his passport was taken by USA gov so he couldn't attend the conference where X-Ray picture was shown. That would almost certainly win him third Nobel 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”)
I appreciate that the original didn't fit, so an edit was necessary, but it's better to use the article's own words if possible. I've done that above by cutting a phrase.
Could you take a look at 50003450 ? It shows as dead after one hour. I cannot see whether this is because someone disliked and killed it, or whether "software" is out on a run again. We talked about this before (49841897).
At any rate, suppression of such comments is to be expected for CJ style groups but not for open-minded discussions.
Same applies to my dead comments 49953689, 49954141, as well as 49938615 and 49941900, on the subject of Hiroshima. If you cannot even quote top experts and administrators with first-hand knowledge (such as A. de Seversky and general C. Sams) just because they contradict the prevailing narrative, then what kind of discussion is that? And the flavour of "curiosity" involved must be very peculiar.
Frankly, my impression is that some people are using or abusing the "flag" feature and perhaps other features they may have at their disposal to remove opinions and facts they don't like or don't even want to see published.
Sure, and I'm sure there are countless people through history, lab techs, post docs, the scribe of Machiavelli, the person who washed da Vinci's shirts who made contributions - maybe major. Hell, stuff I bring up at work now will somehow make it in to our staff meeting as coming from the CEO when it was a conversation him and I had.
The questions is, why, there's clearly an obsession around it. And I honestly doubt if Rosalind Franklin we wouldn't be having the conversation, can you see any indicator to the contrary?
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).
This is not a case where she was running to the scientific society saying “double helix!” and they told her to get lost. She was sitting on evidence. We’ll never know how long it would have taken her to figure out its meaning, but we know Watson was first to recognize it out loud.
If any of you have time, I’ll tell you how I invented Twitter, Reddit, and AI assistants.
what? she was doing a form of crystallography that ONLY makes sense if it's a helix? Like, any time you are doing fiber diffraction it's pretty much "a helix". Who claimed she didn't realize it was a helix? I thought the claim was that she didn't recognize the significance of the helical parameters, which of course she couldn't, she wasn't a chemist and didn't have a model in mind with knowable parameters.
She might have measured those parameters, but she still didn't know what she had (as evidenced by how she subsequently spent a ton of time on Z-dna)
> which of course she couldn't, she wasn't a chemist
Actually, of all of the characters involved, she was the only chemist. Watson was a biologist, Crick was a physicist, as was Wilkins. That's why Franklin was ultimately brought in: to make further progress, they needed a chemist with crystallography experience, and Franklin was the one who had that experience.
I beleive fibre diffraction also works on parallel fibres (non-helical). For example, long chains of beta-sheet (look at beta keratin, which is one of the early non-helical structures analyzed by Astbury).
Technically beta keratin is helical. That said you are correct, there is no requirement to be helical for fiber diffraction. It just turns out it's very difficult to have non helical uniaxial symmetry in nature.
When I was studying spindle shaped viruses by electron microscopy we'd get beautiful fiber diffraction patterns in the fourier transform of the micrographs. I always wanted to try and solve the helical parameters but never got around to it.
The point of the article is not to provide new information.
The point of the article is to create the impression in the reader that Franklin did everything of any importance and was robbed of credit by the white men riding her coattails.
In the discussions about who figured out what when, a larger point is often overlooked: Does it really make sense to give credit to individuals for "discoveries" like the structure of DNA, when in fact they are always the product of collective inquiry? Yes, Watson and Crick made the final intuitive leap over the finish line. But that was only possible because of the many miles their colleagues (including Franklin) had already walked to put them in that position. So their breakthrough insight had more to do with them being in the right place at the right time in history than to any inherent brilliance.
> So their breakthrough insight had more to do with them being in the right place at the right time in history
No, that's just not correct. There were hundreds of people trying to get there and there were a ton of totally wrong theories with people trying to convince others to take them seriously. Not everyone was engaging in activity that could have ever solved the problem, very few were. Why do you think some scientists seem to have dozens or hundreds of major discoveries, but virtually all scientists have no major discoveries? Just luck? They steal them and don't get caught?
You also get Jason Arday with DEI so not sure that's the answer. I'm sure Watson wasn't the first person of either gender to take credit for more than their rightful amount. DEI is just another example of institutional isms - putting people in positions that they have no rightful claim to just because they belong to one of the protected classes is a terrible answer.
It only takes a short look at, say, the current US Secretary of "War" or of Health and Human Services to realize that the meritocracy you're trying to defend is a delusion.
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.
Wilkins produced the initial samples, trained Gosling (who took photo 51) and then had his samples and assistant (Gosling) taken when the high flying Franklin was hired.
Wilkins took lower quality photos before Franklin was even in the lab, and showed them to Watson at a conference.
Yes, Franklin built a way better x-ray camera.
But she was also allegedly pretty horrid to Wilkins. She mocked Wilkins as a "middle class" idiot and refused to share her data with him (Gosling did show Wilkins photo 51 when ordered by higher ups, which Gosling had taken, we don't talk about Gosling because PhD students don't get credit right?).
Franklin held a funeral for the double helix, because I guess she thought Wilkins was an idiot to suggest DNA was a double helix.
Yeah, Wilkins was a little bit rude, giving as little credit to her as possible. But if some privileged upper-class rockstar moves into your lab, tries to freeze you out, mocks you for your theory, then you figure out you can prove your theory is correct (using a photo your former assistant took using the rockstar's camera, and some help from a couple of other researchers) then yeah ... are you really going out of your way to praise them, even if maybe they could have eventually figured it out?
I believe Franklin would have shared the Nobel prize with Watson and Crick had she not died before she could be nominated. The Nobel committee just don't offer posthumous prizes. That compounds the problem of Watson and KCL minimising her contribution. But if she had survived, I'm confident there would've been a huge dust-up as to whether she or Wilkins got third spot on the Nobel prize. As she was already dead before the DNA structure was confirmed, history couldn't go that way.
It's misattribution of causality. She wasn't nominated because she was dead and she suffered academic sexism, chauvinism and skullduggery, especially from Watson. It's not that she wasn't nominated because of academic sexism, chauvinism and skullduggery.
I read through these once. For those where I've been in the wrong, it's two patterns repeating. Either that I learned something in school / as a kid, and it was "correct" at the time but now we know better. Or that the common belief has just always been wrong.
Examples include that "glass is liquid", "bulls hate red", "touching a baby bird will make the mother abandon it", "you only taste salt on part X of your tongue" etc.
No it won't lol, it already isn't. Source: went to school. When there is a political will, there is a way
While it's fair to say that she contributed more (EDIT: Crick actually developed a lot of the mathematical theory which Franklin herself used so I'm not decided) than Watson/Crick (phosphates on the outside, precise helix and double helix measurements), and that her contributions were minimized at the time, she did not solve the DNA structure herself, and she certainly didn't do it alone. There are many others who made large contributions to this project and whose names are totally unknown to the average person. She was acknowledged by Watson/Crick and her work was published in the same issue of Nature - nobody could be unaware of her contributions. Watson later tried to rewrite history with himself at the center and was widely panned, even at the time.
That's the first actual evidence I've seen (I am a DNA nerd and have been trying to understand what her contribution to the intellectual discovery of DNA's double-helix antiparalel).
I would need to go back to Judson's book (Eighth Day of Creation) and see if he actually missed this.
> It is easy to feel great sympathy with Franklin. The fact remains that she never made the inductive leap... before she learned about the model proposed by Watson and Crick, she and Gosling began to draft a paper to state their conclusions so far about the B structure. That draft also survived among Franklin’s papers. It was vigorous, clear, and limited. Klug and I went over it one afternoon in his office. “You see, she was lacking one final step,” Klug said. “Well, two steps. What she missed was the presence of the dyad—the symmetry of the molecule. Which Francis had seen immediately from her information about the space group. And even though her notes earlier showed that she knew about Chargaff’s ratios, she never got to the base pairing.”
Seems like Judson accepts Klug's version of the story: she understood that the structure was helical, but not that it was doubled or base-pair. There's also a final essay at the end of the book "In defence of Rosalind Franklin" which basically reiterates this:
"She had not perceived that the backbones run in opposite directions. She had not started modelling the B form as a double helix and so had yet even to encounter the problem of fitting the bases inside."
As for base complementarity it seems likely that she would have made that leap from everything else that she knew of at the time, but I'm no expert on this subject and have not read her notes.
[0] https://youtu.be/_1FUqUSNPeI?t=2487
FTA:
The new paper does not challenge Watson and Crick’s achievement. Their model of DNA, rushed out in a brief article in Nature after Watson caught his glimpse of photograph 51, went well beyond Franklin’s understanding. [Watson and Crick's model's] two strands running in opposite directions and zipperlike arrangement of complementary base pairs explained how the molecule could carry genetic information and be copied each time a cell divides. “The fact that it was a helix, you know, was not the most exciting aspect of this structure,” says Soraya de Chadarevian, a science historian at the University of California, Los Angeles. Indeed, by 1952, other researchers striving to make sense of the molecule also suspected it was helical. [for example Pauling, who at one point thought DNA might be an alpha helix-like structure]
Instead, this new paper and several previous papers based on Franklin's notes:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10739-026-09866-7 (the paper referenced in the article) -> Franklin's notes say "“evidence for [a] 2-chain […] helix.”Footnote21" where Footnote 21 is Notebook entry for 10 February 1953 (FRKN 1/1, Franklin Papers). The images of her notes are here: https://www.jessiemillsauthor.com/journalism/photo-49-the-x-... (I can't read her handwriting, so I'm taking the 2-chain helix on faith. Also, this article https://philpapers.org/archive/NIETNC-3.pdf interprets her notes to say she recognized the complementary bases: " Franklin’s notebook entry of January 19, 1953—“diads in A. Chargaff data” (Klug index, FRKN 1/1, p. 3)—demonstrates that she had inferred complementary base pairing from the conjunction of Chargaff’s ratios and the crystallographic dyad symmetry, eleven days before Watson saw Photo 51.
So based on the above interpretation, I would probably update my understanding from:
1) Gosling collected the fibre diffraction data and Franklin recognized both that it was a helix, and that the bases were on the inside and complementary. 2) Watson and Crick deduced that DNA formed a double helix with antiparallel chains.
And now I would update it to: 1) Gosling collected the fibre diffraction data and Franklin recognized both that it was a double helix, and that the bases were on the inside and complementary. At that point I think she would have recognized the chains were antiparallel due to dyad symmetry, right?) 2) Watson and Crick deduced that DNA formed a double helix with antiparallel chains.
That's the key bit- I had not previously seen any evidence that Franklin knew it was a double helix or that she knew about the complementary bases. And since this is an area that generates a lot of strong emotions, and there's a lot of noise, I'd like to see her exact text, but I simply cannot read her handwriting.
> Evidence for 2-chain (or 1-chain helix)?
> 49c - general trend is as for single containing helix
> (which differs from single * chain in integral no. residues/*
> only in contribn of high order J'n to the latter)
The crossed out bit says:
> and this is indistinguishable from double helix with residues on
> each having same ζ-value, since 2nd chain has opposite signs in
> ξ & η terms (eq 1 - 2), and eqn 2 contains only [...]
She was certainly thinking about double helixes.
In my mind this doesn't actually meet the final necessary criteria for full credit for the B-DNA double helical structure with base complementarity details, nor the recognition of its implications, it mainly changes some internal bits of the story.
The images seem to contain commentary on Klug's commentary on Franklins work, in the same color?? The text contradicts the timelines that it cites from Klug, the paper focuses on some seemingly irrelevant details, and makes claims about the dispute I've never heard before (for example that phosphates on the outside was stolen - years after she published that finding at a conference in which Watson was in the audience). It also suggests that Klug - a fierce advocate for Franklin's legacy - was also trying to diminish her work.
Helical DNA was the strongest candidate by 51, in part because earlier and cruder X-ray diffraction images had existed for some time (10+ years) and were suggestive of this structure. All of the scientists in question, and many others, collaborated on that possibility at that time, and long before 'Photo 51'. It was not a surprise, but rather the focus of their work.
Franklin was making the famous improved images with the explicit intent of revealing or disproving the helical structure. She and her lab produced the most definitive evidence for helical B-DNA (Photo 51) in early 52, but during 52 the conclusion was still a matter of debate (and humor) amongst them - in particular Franklin was not convinced that A-DNA was helical. From Wiki:
> In July 1952, as a practical joke on Wilkins (who frequently expressed his view that both forms of DNA were helical), Franklin and Gosling produced a funeral notice regretting the 'death' of helical A-DNA
This left the molecular structure and number of strands as open questions. Triple helix models had been attempted by Pauling, Watson and Crick at that time. Watson and Crick though were first to develop the successful double helix model with antiparallel base pairs in early 1953. It is likely that Franklin had also come to the conclusion that DNA was a double helix by this time (based on her draft notes + circumstantial evidence) but she did not do so in total isolation, nor did she complete the final molecular part of the puzzle (though she had worked on it).
TL;DR DNA structure was not a eureka moment spurred by a single breakthrough thought or piece of evidence; many scientists collaborated on eliminating various likely possibilities for years until the correct model was found.
Franklin was tackling the problem scientifically, with a view that you can only prove or disprove with empirical evidence, and publishing an unsupported model was unscientific. Watson was the tech bro, stealing data and coming up with an untested, unverified model. (Crick was mostly a nice guy hanging with the wrong crowd.)
The massive irony is that Franklin published her crystallographic photos and data in support of the Watson-Crick model, which had of course been derived from her images in the first place, without her knowledge.
The first images that Watson saw were actually taken before Franklin joined the team. Better images (and her analysis of them) were some of the most valuable pieces of evidence for narrowing down the possible structures (e.g. they disproved models by Pauling/Watson/Crick) - but by late 1952 Wilkins felt they had enough data and ought to focus on modelling. Franklin (who certainly had an ego of her own) insisted on continuing with her approach - she was an expert in these techniques after all and was making real progress.
Wilkins (who had been had been open with his own inconclusive results), eventually went over her head and showed the famous images to Watson and Crick. He felt they were sufficient to guide the model building and he was frustrated that Franklin had been withholding them while pursuing the wrong research directions. Franklin mocked him for his views at time, but Wilkins was somewhat vindicated.
I don't think this should be considered ironic, or that the image held all the answers, or that the discovery was stolen. Ultimately her work played exactly the role it was intended to, eliminating candidate models. The subsequent diminishment of that role is the real controversy, and most involved later walked back some of their statements.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_51#/media/File:60251254_...
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.
In today's standards, or at least what I am used to, Franklin and Wilkins should be co-authors of the "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" Watson & Crick paper. But they only got this note at the end: "We have also been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr. M. H. F. Wilkins, Dr. R. E. Franklin", not even talking about the image but giving the impression that they had an unimportant talk while having an informal tea.
But they (W & C) include this text: "The previously published X-ray data on deoxyribose nucleic acid are insufficient for a rigorous test of our structure. So far as we can tell, it is roughly compatible with the experimental data, but it must be regarded as unproved until it has been checked against more exact result". They suck for this: they could ask Wilkins & Franklin to include the X-ray that is sufficient to base their claims, add them as authors, and make a better article. But they choose to "be stimulated" by the perfect picture 51 and claim ignorance afterwards.
A Nobel can only be split among 3. Agree with the rest of your post.
Seems to me that #3 is the whole story. That was the key insight, the thing that was never known before. The secret to how life replicates.
Watson's shadow would not extend so far if Franklin's role were known - not just because it would have diminished his, but also because her presence would have undermined attitudes that marginalized non-white-men, in the field of science and beyond. It matters a great deal, unfortunately. And it's a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people who have their pride wrapped up in what he represents.
You’re making the same argument that you are accusing others of making.
Because it represents that 1950's science circles were still misogynist. Not as surprise, but it's worth remembering it.
It was Watson and Crick who discovered the double helix, even if Franklin did write something down about a single helix from a previous photo that they didn't read.
(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)
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.
Yes, how many students get Nobel prizes for the work of their graduate advisor that they didn’t go on to examine independently?
Edit: Since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49969073 was posted earlier and the comments there were more substantive, I've merged the thread thither and re-upped that one.
I have also re-upped 2 other excellent submissions you made - thank you!
At any rate, suppression of such comments is to be expected for CJ style groups but not for open-minded discussions.
Same applies to my dead comments 49953689, 49954141, as well as 49938615 and 49941900, on the subject of Hiroshima. If you cannot even quote top experts and administrators with first-hand knowledge (such as A. de Seversky and general C. Sams) just because they contradict the prevailing narrative, then what kind of discussion is that? And the flavour of "curiosity" involved must be very peculiar.
Frankly, my impression is that some people are using or abusing the "flag" feature and perhaps other features they may have at their disposal to remove opinions and facts they don't like or don't even want to see published.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I mean, yes, there are people who push this attribution because of identity reasons. Rejecting it for the same reasons is at least as bad, no?
The questions is, why, there's clearly an obsession around it. And I honestly doubt if Rosalind Franklin we wouldn't be having the conversation, can you see any indicator to the contrary?
That question is maybe kinda begged? I mean, the actual question is "Who discovered the structure of DNA?"
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If any of you have time, I’ll tell you how I invented Twitter, Reddit, and AI assistants.
She might have measured those parameters, but she still didn't know what she had (as evidenced by how she subsequently spent a ton of time on Z-dna)
Actually, of all of the characters involved, she was the only chemist. Watson was a biologist, Crick was a physicist, as was Wilkins. That's why Franklin was ultimately brought in: to make further progress, they needed a chemist with crystallography experience, and Franklin was the one who had that experience.
When I was studying spindle shaped viruses by electron microscopy we'd get beautiful fiber diffraction patterns in the fourier transform of the micrographs. I always wanted to try and solve the helical parameters but never got around to it.
The point of the article is to create the impression in the reader that Franklin did everything of any importance and was robbed of credit by the white men riding her coattails.
It will work.
No, that's just not correct. There were hundreds of people trying to get there and there were a ton of totally wrong theories with people trying to convince others to take them seriously. Not everyone was engaging in activity that could have ever solved the problem, very few were. Why do you think some scientists seem to have dozens or hundreds of major discoveries, but virtually all scientists have no major discoveries? Just luck? They steal them and don't get caught?
... and owner of a time-travelling mind-reading machine. /i
It only takes a short look at, say, the current US Secretary of "War" or of Health and Human Services to realize that the meritocracy you're trying to defend is a delusion.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
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.