It's an interesting alternative account of the DNA double helix story.
I came from King's and have passed by the plaque that honoured the
contributions of Wilkins and Franklin. But never really appreciated the
significance or the politics of academia.
Just as a matter of side interest, in 2000, King's named one of its
buildings Franklin-Watson Building.
Also, The Nobel prize can't be awarded posthumously. Franklin died in 1958
from cancer and therefore didn't qualify for the nomination in 1962.
Chee-Wee
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 1:03 AM
Subject: The Twisted Road to the Double Helix
> Several journals and newspapers recently have reviewed the following book
> which reveals that Watson, Crick and Wilkins, who received the Nobel Prize
> for "unravelling the mysteries of the genetic code", indulged in some
rather
> underhand and unprofessional behaviour in which they "borrowed"
extensively
> from the work of a bright young woman scientist by the name of Rosalind
> Franklin.
>
> The following review was published in the Scientific American:
>
> --------------
>
>
<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000841A3-982D-1DC9-AF71809EC588E
ED
>
> F&catID=2>
>
> The Twisted Road to the Double Helix
>
> Rosalind Franklin's stunningly clear x-ray photographs elucidated the
> structure of DNA, but her contribution was ignored at the time
>
> By Dean H. Hamer
>
> The aphorism "history is always written by the victors" is as true for
> science as for geopolitics. Certainly it was the case for the discovery in
> 1953 of the double helical structure of DNA, the most important discovery
in
> 20th-century biology. The victors were James Watson and Francis Crick, who
> together with Maurice Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for crossing the
> finish line first. The loser was Rosalind Franklin, who produced the x-ray
> data that most strongly supported the structure but was not properly
> acknowledged for her contributions.
>
> According to Watson's best-selling 1968 account of the great race, The
Double
> Helix, Franklin was not even a contender, much less a major contributor.
He
> painted her as a mere assistant to Wilkins who "had to go or be put in her
> place" because she had the audacity to think she might be able to work on
DNA
> on her own. Worse yet, she "did not emphasize her feminine qualities,"
> lamented Watson, who refers to her only as "Rosy." "The thought could not
be
> avoided," he concluded, "that the best home for a feminist was in another
> person's lab."
>
> Franklin never had a chance to respond; she died of ovarian cancer in
1958.
> Her good friend Anne Sayre did offer a rebuttal in Rosalind Franklin and
DNA,
> but that biography is too polemical and pedantic to be either persuasive
or a
> good read.
>
> Now, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the double helix, noted
British
> biographer Brenda Maddox has produced a more balanced, nuanced and
informed
> version of the tale. Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA is neither a
> paean to Franklin nor a condemnation of her competitors. It's simply the
> story of a scientist's life as gleaned from extensive correspondence,
> published and unpublished manuscripts, laboratory notebooks, and
interviews
> with many of the protagonists.
>
> It was an interesting life. Franklin, the daughter of a prominent Jewish
> family, was an "alarmingly clever" girl who spent her free time doing
> arithmetic for pleasure. She was educated at a series of academically
> rigorous schools culminating in the University of Cambridge, where,
despite
> the fact that women were still excluded from receiving an undergraduate
> degree, she managed a Ph.D. in physical chemistry and developed the
> experimental style that was to characterize all her subsequent work-- an
> approach that was meticulous, albeit sometimes overly cautious.
>
> Then it was off to Paris, where she applied the new techniques of x-ray
> diffraction to the structure of coal. In France, Franklin bloomed both as
a
> scientist, authoring numerous independent publications, and as a young
woman
> free from the constraints of family and stuffy British society. It was a
> happy and productive period, as were her final years at Birkbeck College
in
> London, where she collaborated with Aaron Klug on the structure of the
> tobacco mosaic virus.
>
> Alas, the central and most important two years of her career were spent in
> the far less hospitable environment of the biophysics unit at King's
College
> London. There she immediately locked horns with Wilkins over who would get
to
> study the structure of DNA-- a subject that had been largely ignored
during
> World War II, with its emphasis on more practical matters, but was
> increasingly regarded as the problem in structural biology. Wilkins, who
had
> been researching the matter for years, had seniority but little insight or
> good data. It was Franklin, a newcomer to biology, who made the critical
> observation that DNA exists in two distinct forms, A and B, and produced
the
> sharpest pictures of both. They reached a compromise that Franklin would
work
> on the A form and Wilkins on the B and went their separate ways.
>
> Or so Franklin thought. In fact, Wilkins, in a weekend visit to Cambridge,
> spilled the King's beans to Watson and Crick, who soon thereafter began
the
> model building. Although their approach was less meticulous than
Franklin's,
> it was also far quicker. A few months later it was Watson's turn to visit
> London, where Wilkins showed him Franklin's startlingly clear x-ray
> photograph of the B form. On the train back to Cambridge, Watson drew the
> pattern from memory on the margin of his newspaper. Yet just two months
> later, in their historic letter to Nature, he and Crick claimed, "We were
not
> aware of the details of the results presented [in accompanying papers from
> Franklin's and Wilkins's groups] ... when we devised our structure."
>
> How did Watson and Crick, with the complicity of Wilkins, get away with so
> brazenly heisting "Rosy's" data? Maddox offers several theories. The most
> obvious is Franklin's position as a female researcher at an institution
where
> women were still not allowed to set foot in the senior common room. There
was
> also the matter of anti-Semitism. Franklin's family may have anglicized
their
> name, but her uncle was the first High Commissioner of Palestine, and she
was
> active in Jewish relief groups. She felt isolated, even ostracized, in a
> school where theology was the largest department and "there were swirling
> cassocks and dog collars everywhere."
>
> We'll probably never know the full story, but Maddox's book shines new
light
> on one of the key characters in the tale of the double helix. Rosalind
> Franklin may not have had the intuition of some of her competitors, but
what
> she did possess was equally important: integrity....
>
> -----------------
>
> Dr Mel C Siff
> Denver, USA
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Supertraining/
>
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