A Tribute to Rosalind Franklin on her 100th birth anniversary

                                            (Rosalind Franklin (25 July 1920 - 16 April 1958)

Yesterday was 100^th anniversary of the birth of British Chemist Rosalind Franklin, a pioneering X-ray crystallographer. Dr. Franklin’s work, particularly the picture that she took of her X-ray diffraction pattern of DNA in May 1952 became famous “Photograph 51” a critical for correctly determining structure and function of DNA. In recent years, her story has become famous as one of a woman whose scientific work was overlooked during her lifetime. The credit for 1953 discovery of DNA’s structure goes to James Watson and Francis Crick along with Franklin’s former colleague Maurice Wilkins. This discovery was recognized by the 1962 Nobel Prize four years after her tragic death from ovarian cancer (Dr. Franklin was not nominated for this award since Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously). However, she was not credited beyond a tiny footnote, and died at 37 never realizing how her data helped the discovery of DNA‘s helical structure, a blue print of life. 

Wilkins was studying nucleic acid and proteins via X-ray imaging in Kings College London when 

Rosalind Franklin, an expert in X-ray crystallography, joined the unit. The misunderstanding between the two outstanding scientists was - What Wilkins did not know was that when Franklin was recruited, she was told that she would be in charge of X-ray studies of DNA. Wilkins thought that Franklin would be his assistant. This caused the tension between the pair, and their personalities only served to deepen the divide. Later Wilkins joined the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge where his friend Francis Crick was working with James Watson on building a model of DNA molecule and shared several of Franklin’s images including “Photograph 51” without her knowledge and consent. Watson described first seeing this image as: “The instant I saw the picture my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race. The pattern was unbelievably simpler from those obtained previously. Moreover, the black cross of reflections which dominated the picture could only arise from a helical structure”.

 Up until the time when they saw the particular image, Watson and Crick erroneously postulated that DNA “backbone” was in the inside of the molecule and the nucleic acid “bases” pointed outward. This image pointed out their error in logic so they quickly revised their hypothesis and published a paper in Nature announcing their discovery, which then led to them being awarded Nobel Prize a few years later. Franklin and Wilkins are credited in this paper though . If Wilkins and Franklin had cooperated better, they might have been the first to discover DNA’s structure and the famous pair of Watson and Crick could have been the pair of Wilkins and Franklin. Lastly in Franklin’s hnour, Europe’s 2020 Mars Rover (now delayed until 2022) has been named for DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin. “It is a tremendously fitting tribute that the Rover has been named after Rosalind Franklin, as she helped us understand life on Earth and now her namesake will do the same on Mars,” U.K. Science Minister said at an event to revel the Rover’s name.

https://www.newscientist.com/people/rosalind-franklin/

https://www.talkingbiotechpodcast.com/139-recognizing-dr-rosalind-franklin/