by Gidon Schwartz, Education & Outreach Executive
Sometimes, scientific discoveries truly change the way we see the world. This could be Nicolaus Copernicus’ discovery in 1543 of the Earth moving around the Sun, Newton discovering gravity in 1687, or in 1953 when James Watson and Francis Crick announced (initially in a pub!) that they had finally discovered the structure of DNA – the blueprint of all life. But the story of how they discovered it is a tale of enterprise, innovation, theft and sexism.
The race to find the structure of DNA had many proponents, such as Pauling and Gosling’s triple helix arranged around a central backbone, while Watson and Crick were in their lab in Cambridge arranging pieces of cardboard to try and work out the structure, but all this time there was a vital piece of information missing. Meanwhile in Kings College London, two scientists were having a disagreement about how to work together in the very difficult art of x-ray crystallography (taking photographs of chemicals using x-rays), particularly of DNA. They were Maurice Wilkins, who later shared the Nobel Prize with Watson and Crick, and Rosalind Franklin.
Wilkins accused Franklin of being difficult to work with and tried to ensure she did not have the best samples to work on; this has now mostly been explained as sexism on Wilkins’ side. Sir John Rundell, the director of the Biophysics Research Unit, agreed that Wilkins would focus on one form of DNA solution, whilst Franklin studied the other. There was much debate amongst the scientific community if they were both helical in nature, as we know to be true today, or if the ‘B form’ was not.
Meanwhile a PHD student, Raymond Gosling, under the supervision of, and together with Rosalind Franklin, managed to refine the photographing process to take the now famous ‘Photograph 51’ – named such as it was the 51st photograph that Franklin’s lab had taken. He showed the photo to Wilkins who, days later, showed it to Watson and Crick, providing this vital piece of the puzzle enabling them later to enter The Eagle pub in Cambridge and announce that they had “discovered the secret of life” and later publish their paper, ‘Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid’ in April 1953.
James Watson, writing in his book ‘The Double Helix’ implied that Franklin did not realise the implications of the photograph. However, recent evidence has come to light of Franklin’s team exchanging letters with Crick’s team demonstrating that they did understand the significance of the breakthrough they had made.
This photograph is one of many that Franklin took, contributing a major level of understanding and insight towards Watson and Crick’s discovery, together with their own research conducted in Cambridge. In a world of science collaboration, Franklin should have been credited for her role on one of the largest discoveries of the 20th Century.
Today marks what would be the 98th birthday of Raymond Gosling, this vital, yet often overlooked man in the discovery of the double helix.
