If you Google “who discovered the structure of DNA,” the names of James Watson and Francis Crick will appear on your screen. But the real mind behind this discovery was a British chemist named Rosalind Franklin.
Here’s how the story goes.
In 1952, Rosalind Franklin had ingeniously used x-ray diffraction to take the famous Photograph 51, which showed an X shaped structure that is indicative of some sort of helical structure.
She was hesitant to rush into creating possible models — instead, she worked tirelessly on the mathematic calculations that would eventually lead her to the model. While she worked on these calculations, however, her jealous lab partner, Maurice Wilkins, took Photograph 51 and showed it to scientists Watson and Crick, who were also in the race to find the structure of DNA.
Watson and Crick hastily threw together potential models for the structure and arrived at the double helix we know today. They rushed to publish “their” discovery, and they received The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. All the meanwhile, Franklin was astonished at how they came to the discovery so quickly. It was long before she found out about Wilkins’ betrayal, and since her death she has not been awarded a Nobel Prize for her research because the prize is not given posthumously.
Next time you hear Watson and Crick being mentioned without Rosalind Franklin’s name, say her name!