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Nov 11, 2017 Rosalind Franklin enrolled at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1938 and studied chemistry. In 1941, she was awarded Second Class Honors in her finals, which, at that time, was accepted as a bachelor. Rosalind Franklin Rosalind Franklin. We would likely not understand much about DNA or viruses without Rosalind Franklin, who in her short life, worked on X-ray diffraction images of DNA that implied its spiral shape and led Crick and Watson to the correct modeling of this base form of all life. Her work with mapping the structure of viruses led to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her lab partner after her death.
Francis Crick and James Watson recreate their demonstration of the double helix model for DNA in 1990.
updated 9/29/2010 3:20:59 PM ET2010-09-29T19:20:59
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Rediscovered letters and postcards highlight the fierce competition among scientists who discovered DNA's famous double-helix structure and unraveled the genetic code.
Francis Crick and James D. Watson shared a 1962 Nobel Prize with Maurice Wilkins for their work on revealing the structure of the DNA molecule that encodes instructions for the development and function of living beings. But formerly lost letters kept by Crick add more color to the well-known rivalries between Wilkins and the Crick-Watson duo.
'The [letters] give us much more flavor and examples illuminating the characters and the relations between them,' said study researcher Alexander Gann, editorial director at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press in New York. 'They're consistent with what we already believed, but they add important details.'
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A fourth researcher credited with initial DNA work, Rosalind Franklin, died of cancer in 1958 and was never nominated for a Nobel Prize. She and her male colleagues did not get along despite their professional collaboration, as seen in some rather blunt messages contained within the new material.
Rediscovered letters and postcards highlight the fierce competition among scientists who discovered DNA's famous double-helix structure and unraveled the genetic code.
'I hope the smoke of witchcraft will soon be getting out of our eyes,' Wilkins wrote to Crick and Watson in 1953, as Franklin prepared to leave Wilkins' lab for Birbeck College in London.
Nine boxes of Crick's material turned up mixed in with the correspondence of a colleague, Sydney Brenner, who had donated his personal documents to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library in New York. Researchers knew that much of Crick's earlier correspondence had been lost, but no one suspected it would emerge in Brenner's files.
Rival labs
The rediscovered material contains several nuggets about the race between rival labs to develop a DNA model in the early 1950s. Wilkins and Franklin worked at King’s College London, while Crick and Watson did their research at the Cavendish Lab of Cambridge University.
The rediscovered material contains several nuggets about the race between rival labs to develop a DNA model in the early 1950s. Wilkins and Franklin worked at King’s College London, while Crick and Watson did their research at the Cavendish Lab of Cambridge University.
Watson and Crick built an incorrect triple-helix model of DNA in 1951, after Watson saw a lecture by Franklin where she showed crystallographic X-ray images she had taken of DNA. The overconfident Watson had failed to take notes, and so he underestimated the amount of water in the DNA structure.
That led to a temporary agreement that Watson and Crick should not pursue a model of DNA for the time being, because the duo had merely used data from the rival King's College lab. Wilkins and Crick exchanged newly uncovered letters that show Wilkins alternating between a formal, typed letter about the agreement and a handwritten note expressing more personal anguish over the situation.
Yet Crick and Watson still managed to come off as confident in a rediscovered letter to Wilkins, and even include a verbal jab.
Rather than end the letter by praising Wilkins for now having a clear chance to solve the DNA structure, they crossed it out and wrote: '...So cheer up and take it from us that even if we kicked you in the pants it was between friends. We hope our burglary will at least produce a united front in your group!'
The exchange emphasizes the different attitudes among the scientists, Gann explained.
'Watson and Crick are jovial and cavalier, even though they've just been humiliated,' Gann told Livescience. 'But Wilkins was always anxious and tortured about different things.'
'Rosy' the scientist
The rediscovered Crick material, which includes correspondence, photographs, postcards, preprints, reprints, meeting programs, notes and newspaper cuttings, also gives new details on the relationship between Rosalind Franklin and her male colleagues.
The rediscovered Crick material, which includes correspondence, photographs, postcards, preprints, reprints, meeting programs, notes and newspaper cuttings, also gives new details on the relationship between Rosalind Franklin and her male colleagues.
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Well-known tensions reigned early on. An early misunderstanding poisoned the relationship between Wilkins and Franklin, and Watson's rather chauvinist attitude toward Franklin at the time included complaints that she failed to wear lipstick or pretty herself up like other women.
Franklin's male peers also persisted in calling her 'Rosy' or 'Rosie,' a nickname she disliked immensely.
Still, her work with X-ray crystallography created a certain 'Photograph 51,' which allowed Crick and Watson to realize that DNA has a double-helix structure. Without Franklin knowing, Wilkins showed her photograph to Crick and Watson in 1953.
Wilkins later complained to Crick and Watson in a rediscovered letter: 'To think that Rosie had all the 3D data for 9 months & wouldn’t fit a helix to it and there was I taking her word for it that the data was anti-helical. Christ.'
The rival labs eventually agreed to publish several papers together on the DNA structure in the journal Nature.
A twist of discovery
Many have argued that Franklin deserved Nobel recognition, because her experimental work revealed the double-helix structure that helped Crick and Watson build their DNA model. Even Watson suggested much later that Franklin and Wilkins should have shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry for their contributions.
Many have argued that Franklin deserved Nobel recognition, because her experimental work revealed the double-helix structure that helped Crick and Watson build their DNA model. Even Watson suggested much later that Franklin and Wilkins should have shared a Nobel Prize in chemistry for their contributions.
Franklin, who had all the photographic evidence of DNA's double-helix structure in front of her, had dismissed the idea of a helix. That's because she focused her attention on the clearer data from the A form of DNA, which looks less obviously like a helix than the B form of DNA.
The crucial photograph shown to Crick and Watson had contained the B form of DNA, and so the pair immediately seized upon its helical shape. But a newly rediscovered letter shows that even they might have hesitated for a moment upon seeing the A form of DNA.
'This is the first time I have had an opportunity for a detailed study of the picture of Structure A, and I must say I am glad I didn’t see it earlier, as it would have worried me considerably,' Crick told Wilkins in the summer of 1953.
Gann suspects today that Crick and Watson would have gone ahead with their double-helix model and ignored the more ambiguous evidence from the A form of DNA.
'It wasn't anti-helical; it just wasn't obviously helical,' Gann said in a phone interview.
Publishing what-ifs
Other rediscovered letters include one in 1963 from C.P. Snow, the British physicist who bemoaned the communication gap between science and the humanities in a lecture titled 'The Two Cultures.' Snow wanted Crick to write something for general audiences about the DNA discovery story.
Other rediscovered letters include one in 1963 from C.P. Snow, the British physicist who bemoaned the communication gap between science and the humanities in a lecture titled 'The Two Cultures.' Snow wanted Crick to write something for general audiences about the DNA discovery story.
But Crick declined by noting he would have to consult Watson, Wilkins and everyone else involved. Five years later, Watson published his famous first-person account on his own, titled 'The Double Helix.'
Similarly, Crick spent six years putting off writing a textbook on molecular biology, despite pleas from a publisher. Watson eventually published a textbook called 'Molecular Biology of the Gene,' which defined the field of molecular biology and is now in its sixth edition.
Had Crick gone ahead and written his textbook, he might have ended up defining molecular biology in the same way, but in a different style, Gann said.
'Watson's first response when we showed him [the correspondence] was 'Wow, if he had written that I would have never written mine,' Gann recalled.
Gann and Jan Witkowski, executive director of the Banbury Center in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, commented on the new Crick material in the Sept. 30 issue of the journal Nature.
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She helped discover DNA, got snubbed by her contemporaries, and kept right on going
1. Before DNA, she studied the holes in coal
Rosalind Franklin was born in the summer of 1920 in London into an affluent and educated family. From a young age, she showed exceptional talent and creativity that manifested in an early fascination with physics and chemistry. After college, she pursued a doctoral degree from Cambridge, and since this was during World War II, she worked on the porosity of coal for fuel purposes and other wartime devices. Her PhD thesis was titled, 'The physical chemistry of solid organic colloids with special reference to coal.'
After her PhD, she described herself while asking a friend about job openings as 'a physical chemist who knows very little physical chemistry, but quite a lot about the holes in coal.'
2. She captured photograph 51
You probably know that Watson and Crick published a paper in Nature in April 1953, proposing their model of DNA structure. You also know that they won the 1962 Nobel Prize for that paper. What you probably do not know is that in the same issue of Nature, there was a paper by Franklin and her doctoral trainee, Raymond Gosling. The paper was titled, 'Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate.'
The paper provided experimental evidence that supported some of Watson and Crick’s purely hypothetical arguments. Specifically, the famous photograph 51 shows that DNA is in fact helical. In the conclusion of the paper she wrote, “Thus our general ideas are not inconsistent with the model proposed by Watson and Crick in the preceding communication.”
Prior to the publication of this paper, photograph 51 was shown to Crick without Franklin’s consent, which is still the topic of a debate over ethics and the Nobel Prize, which is more broadly controversial for rarely recognizing women. However, Franklin was given due credit in Photograph 51, a 2015 play about her life, which starred Nicole Kidman.
3. Franklin loved traveling and backpacking
Her love for science and discovery did not mean that she did not have hobbies. She traveled frequently to her favorite country, France, and backpacked through the French Alps.
She wrote to her mother in 1946,“I am quite sure I could wander happily in France forever. I love the people, the country and the food.” She also traveled to the US for work, where she had made many friends throughout the years.
4. After DNA, the discoveries continued with tobacco viruses
Franklin's colleagues at King's College were getting more and more hostile towards her, calling her 'Rosy' and 'Dark lady' behind her back. In 1953, One of Franklin's colleagues (and a Nobel laureate), Wilkins, wrote in a letter to Watson and Crick:
'I hope the smoke of witchcraft will soon be getting out of our eyes.'
The growing sexism she faced drove Franklin out of King’s college, and she moved to Birkbeck College the same year. At Birkbeck, she distanced herself from DNA and started to work on another fascinating molecule, RNA, a molecule that carries genetic information and just like DNA, is vital to life.
She used X-ray crystallography (a method to look at the shape of very small things like viruses) to explore the structure of the Tobacco Mosaic virus (TMV), an RNA virus that infects tobacco plants. Just a few years into this new arena of research, her team put together a clear model of TMV. Their model suggested that TMV is a barrel-shaped virus made up of proteins, with RNA molecules wrapped in the donut hole like a coiled rope. This work has since been extended to several other viruses, and has been fundamental to our understanding of viruses and RNA.
5. She worked until the last breath
In 1956, Franklin was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and started chemotherapy. But nothing could stop DNA’s Dark Lady and her love for science. She published seven scientific papers in 1956, and went on to publish six more in 1957, all while she was undergoing chemotherapy. This is how the crystallography pioneer John D. Bernal described Franklin’s final months: 'Her devotion to research showed itself at its finest in the last months of her life. Although stricken with an illness, which she knew would be fatal, she continued to work right up to the end.”
Franklin succumbed to cancer in April 1958, but her legacy continues to this day. Photograph 51 is in almost every biology textbook around the world. Perhaps she was not appreciated in her time, but the future won't forget her.