Talk:Rosalind Franklin
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The discovery of he structure of DNA is discussed by some of the original researchers in
DNA - Genesis of a Discovery, edited by S. Chomet and published by Newman-Hemisphere (textor@btinternet.com).
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Watson and Crick stole Franklin's work.
Watson and Crick stole Franklin's work, at least according to the witnesses that PBS's Nova interviewed. The entry should say more in that direction, if PBS is to be believed.
"Without her knowledge, another Randall research associate, Maurice Wilkins, showed some of her X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA to James D. Watson, whereupon Watson, with Francis Crick, succeeded in determining the molecule's structure, and published in Nature magazine on April 25, 1953 an article describing the double-helical structure of DNA. Articles by Wilkins and Franklin illuminating their X-ray diffraction data supporting the findings of Watson and Crick were published in the same issue."
Not enough. If PBS is to be believed.
In fact, (again, if PBS's Lynne Osman Elkin is to be believed):
1. Despite the urging of Wilkins, W + C kept putting the hydophobic bases on the outside.
2. Wilkins even had to help W + C interpret stolen information.
3. W + C stole the Franklin's MRC report too, at which point W + C finally gave in to Wilkins' urging and put the hydrophobic bases on the inside.
Don't take my word for it. Take PBS's Lynne Osman Elkin's word. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/photo51/elkin.html)
According to Brenda Maddox it was Crick who suggested that they try the phosphate on the outside (although Rosalind Franklin had told them this when she spotted the error in their previous model). Watson's reaction was that it was too easy (too many possibilities with the phosphates on the outside), Crick suggested trying anyway. Wilkins also told them the dimensions of one full turn of the helix (34.4 Å) and showed Watson the famous photograph No.51. Crick and Watson got hold of a copy of the MRC report, but it was not stolen, it was not private or confidential, though it was really only meant as an internal report to the funding body, so they could check their money wasn't being wasted. Crick and Watson got important information about the type of space group (fundemental unit) the crystal was composed of from the report, and worked out from this that the two strands run counter to each other. I think it more accurate to say that they were more like confidence tricksters than thieves. They provided a shoulder to cry on for Maurice Wilkins, who then rather naively gave more information to them than was wise. Of course anyone with any integrity would not have exploited the situation in the shameless way Crick and Watson did. Of course Wilkins was also amply rewarded for his duplicity, sharing in the Nobel prize.--Alun 18:35, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
more info
The New York Times obituary for Crick has this to say:
"One of the problems caused by the book was Dr. Watson's implication that the pair of them had obtained Dr. Franklin's data on DNA surreptitiously and hence had deprived her of due credit for the DNA discovery. Dr. Crick believed he obtained the data fairly since she had presented it at a public lecture, to which he had been invited. Though Dr. Watson had misreported a vital figure from the lecture, a correct version reached Dr. Crick through the Medical Research Council report. If Dr. Franklin felt Dr. Crick had treated her unfairly, she never gave any sign of it. She became friends with both Dr. Crick and Dr. Watson, and spent her last remission from cancer in Dr. Crick's house."
See also this article: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-3/p42.html
I don't know what to believe.
- Believe it all; why not? From what I understand, Franklin never learned of her data being secretly obtained by Crick and Watson . It also seems doubtful she knew the extent of what Wilkins did. If this is true, this could explain much of the Crick obituary excerpt, although it doesn't speak much of Crick.
- Also, I remember reading somewhere that Franklin's article (with Wilkins) in Nature, that appeared concurrently with the Crick and Watson article, was seen by many to be corroboration of Crick and Watson's work. Crick and Watson did not advertise that they had gotten their ideas from Franklin's data in order to bolster this seeming corroboration. Also, it seems clear that Franklin did not know at that time of their use of her data, since in her article she also says that her independent data is consistent with Crick and Watson.
- Hmm... "Implication"? Hehe. Watson pretty much makes it clear they stole it. Any other rationale is wishful thinking on Crick's part. --Chan-Ho Suh 10:13, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)
- I believe the book Rosalind Franklin: the Dark Lady of DNA may contain my claims above. I will have to read it and check some day. --Chan-Ho Suh 10:28, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)
- Yes, they stole it. Rosalind Franklin never knew, because Jim Watson only revealed what they'd done in his book The Double Helix in 1968, ten years after her death. However, the book Rosalind Franklin: the Dark Lady of DNA also suggests that Franklin probably wouldn't have solved DNA herself because she'd had the information for a long time before Crick and Watson got hold of it and hadn't done anything with it. Simon d
- I am currently reading Rosalind Franklin: the Dark Lady of DNA and it certainly does not 'suggests that Franklin probably wouldn't have solved DNA herself'. Francis Crick himself has stated that Rosalind Franklin was a matter of weeks away from discovering the structure. In fact the book stresses that Rosalind Franklin was taking X-ray photographs of the 'A' form of DNA which gives pictures which are much more difficult to interperet (it has a more densely packed structure with a tighter coil). Maurice Wilkins was studying the much more open structured 'B' from. Franklin's famous X-ray picture No. 51 (which Wilkins showed to Watson, convincing him that DNA was a helix) was of the 'B' form. She had this picture because her samples would sometimes change from one conformation to the other during the x-ray process (which could take many hours). Franklin and Wilkins were on extremely bad terms so Franklin did not show him the picture, but also did not work on it herself, as the agreement was that she worked on the 'A' form. It was Rosalind Franklin herself who discovered initially that there were two forms of DNA, a hydrated 'B' form and a dehydrated 'A' form. Franklin certainly knew the 'B' form was a helix, and also that it was a double helix (which Crick and Watson repetedly got wrong), but she was unsure about the 'A' form due to it's difficulties. Franklin saw no purpose in model building until she had collected enough data, her attitude being that a model isn't proof. In actuality it was Franklin's excellent experimental work which added the necessary proof to the Crick and Watson model. It would seem to me that a woman who had been working on 'holes in coal' up untill 1950 and had only spent 2 years working on any sort of biological material (she was a physical chemist using x-rays to look at the structure of carbon from 1943-1950) had made incredible progress. There were two steps she had not made, she had not realised that the two deoxyribose-phosphate backbones 'pointed' in different directions nor that the bases paired. Crick and Watson used information from many sources for their model and their model would not have been possible at all if a chemist (Jerry Donohue) sharing an office with them in Cambrige hadn't pointed out that they were using the wrong conformation for their bases (Watson was using the enol form, which doesn't allow base pairing by hydrogen bonding). Jerry Donohue wrote in 1976 'Let's face it if the fates hadn't ordained that I share an office with Watson and Crick in 1952-53 they'd still be puttering around trying to pair like-with-like enol forms of the bases'. I think that we should talk of Crick, Franklin and Watson because, though the model was Crick and Watsons, the proof was Franklins. If only Wilkins and Franklin had got on better, or Franklin had been the one working on the 'B' form of DNA then recognition would probably have gone where it was most deserved. Franklin never realised that her material had been plagiarised, and so had no reason to bear a grudge.--Alun 18:06, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The New Yorker review of Maddox's book (a link is at the end of the article) confirms that Maddox describes how Franklin was convinced that DNA was not helical because she believed the A form not the B form was the important one. Photograph 51 clearly indicated that the B form was a helix, yet Franklin chose to investigate the A form and leave the B form to Wilkins. She had the choice. She took Photograph 51 in early 1952 and could then have chosen to investigate the B form rather than the A form. By early 1953 her time on the project was up and she had no interest in continuing with it. As the New Yorker writer says, Crick's estimation that she would have worked out the structure of DNA in six weeks was overly generous to her. I think he said it because of the guilt he felt for how shabbily they had treated her by taking advantage of her work and not crediting her for it until long after she was dead. Simon d 22:45, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- Why don't you read the book instead of a review? You might learn that the division of labour between the A and B forms occured before the photograph was taken. The division of the work was arbitrary when it was made. Reviewers often get things wrong and it can be a mistake to rely too heavily on such a source. Indeed Franklin was writing a paper on the helical structure of the A from when Crick and Watson published (as is stated in the article).--Alun 14:55, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- I have read the book, Alun. Why are you so patronising? Franklin was far from working out the structure of DNA because she seemed to think that the A form (dehydrated)was the biologically important form rather than the B form (hydrated) - I've never understood why she would have thought that since the cell nucleus is a wet place - and so she was concentrating on the A form, which was too difficult to interpret. By early 1953 Franklin had almost finished her work on the project and was writing it up. She may have worked out that the A form was also a double helix, but there's a big gap between knowing that and having actually worked out the structure. She wasn't even considering the B form that would give the answer. Simon d 23:43, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- I'm sorry if I come accross as patronising, it's not intentional. You specifically make reference to the review, and not your reading of the book, which is why I mention it. Also much of what you have written seems to me to be in direct contradiction to what the book actually says, which I attributed to the reviewer. As you've read the book you will know that the Crick and Watson model was based on the work of others, primarily Rosalind Franklin, and that they never proved their model. In fact it remained a theoretical model for many years (by Crick's own statement). It was accepted because it fulfilled all the requisite criteria, and it's functionallity was apparent. Franklin wanted to prove the structure before she published, something much more complicated than producing a postulated model. I think the book is quite clear that the division between the A form and the B form was quite arbitrary. Franklin was, of course, a physical chemist and crystalographer by training and had never worked on biological material before. You state that the review confirms that Maddox describes how Franklin was convinced that DNA was not helical, but the reviewer must have been reading a different book to you and me, because Maddox clearly states that the evidence is that Franklin was a cautious scientist, who wanted to be absolutely sure that both forms of DNA were helical. Being unconvinced that the A form was a helix (because the crystalographs were more difficult to interpret) is not the same as being convinced that DNA was not helical , it is saying that she required more data in order to be convinced. According to the book, by the beginning of 1953 she had enough data to be convinced that the 'A' form was also a helix. She had always been aware that the 'B' form was a helix. Good science needs to be approached with the eye of a sceptic, why else do we make control experiments? The very fact that she was writing a paper on the helical nature of DNA 'A' when she left King's gives the lie to the statement that Crick's estimation that she would have worked out the structure of DNA in six weeks was overly generous to her.--Alun 08:21, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
Has anyone else read this biography? It's very good, although I haven't finished it yet because the fact that she died so young depresses me. Anyway, Franklin's great and I have to wonder what sort of things she could have done if she'd lived a bit longer! It's truly amazing to consider all that has come out of a very pretty picture of DNA taken in the 50s...
dna
Life Story
The BBC film 'Life Story' (1985/7, starring Juliet Stephenson) was a detailed and sympathetic exploration of Rosalind Franklin's role in the discovery of the DNA structure. My recollection is that in the film Franklin plays an important role in correcting a significant cock-up in the first version of the Watson-Crick model (not enough H2O groups? or is this a convenient film-simplification of the hydrophobic groups issue mentioned earlier as being raised with W+C by Wilkins?). Linuxlad 12:03, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- Crick and Watson's first attempt at a model was wrong. They invited the King's team to Cambridge to see it as a courtesy. Rosalind Franklin took one look and said that the phosphates should be on the outside, or it wouldn't be able to hydrate. Franklin was a chemist and spotted the mistake immediately. Interestingly the Linus Pauling model made the same mistake early in 1953. Crick and Watson continued to try to put the bases on the outside, ignoring the advice of someone with far more chemistry. So the BBC drama was accurate.--Alun 18:16, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Too DNA centred
This page, at the moment, puts far too much emphasis on the DNA part of Dr. Franklin's career. For example in the text DNA is discovered in 1953, then Dr Franklin dies in 1958, so we are lead to believe that she made no meaningful contributions to science after this date. She worked on DNA for 2 years in a career spanning from 1943-1958. I think more emphasis should be placed on her world class contributions to the studies of coal/charcoal/carbon and her later studies of plant viruses. Here's a woman who acheived excellent discoveries in three scientific fields, but who only seems to be remembered as someone who nearly discovered the structure of DNA, or as someone who had their results plagierised. A lot of this page also seems to be a justification for the way Crick and Watson manipulated information from other peoples hard work which allowed them the time to formulate their model. I removed the comment that Crick and Watson's model was largely their own work as it is self evident that the model could not have been built at all without access to the King's MRC report (which showed Crick and Watson that the chains were antiparellel), Franklin's photograph 51 (which proved a helix for 'B' DNA), Jerry Donohue's comment about keto- and enol- forms (see above) or Dr. Maurice Wilkins' loose tongue. This page is also not the place to make a defence of Crick and Watson, make that on their own pages please, this is about Dr Rosalind Franklin and not about them. I think I'm going to try and find some time to extensively edit this page over the next few weeks.--Alun 10:17, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Getting POV??
The recent additions are welcome but the article is in danger of getting POV and also speculative. I don't think we should have sympathetic asides on her politics for example, unless it is either known fact or _directly_ relevant to what she did. Most people will come to the article for the DNA connection. Clearly we need her other work referred to, but this is not a festschrift (sp?). We all know many university professors who produced a considerable body of fine work but who do not have (and may never have) an entry in WP. Linuxlad 10:40, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Linuxlad, I don't understand your point at all. I think that a person's political point of view is relevant if it helps to enlighten us as to her motivation to do good science, and her attitude to others in her profession, and what makes you say that it is a 'sympathetic aside'? It is sympathetic only by your interpretation, I see it as merely a statement of fact. I also think that even if people do come here because of the DNA connection then it won't be a bad thing that they will find out that she should not be narrowly defined by a brief and relatively unhappy period in her career. Personally I think it is extremely POV to try to claim that her sole interest is as someone who provided the much needed evidence (not to mention much of the inspiration) required by the Crick-Watson model. She was more than a university professor who produced a considerable body of fine work (for one thing she was not a professor), she was also a woman in a male dominated and misogynistic environment/era and a Jewish person in an equally racist/anti-Semitic era. To have achieved what she did in such a short career against such odds is a testament to her tenaciousness, courage and ability. Many people in WP may not deserve incorporation based on their careers, and yet will be here because they are famous, many will deserve entry but remain obscure, but when someone is here it is only correct to give as accurate a picture of the person as possible. I do not include my POV in these edits, but try to remove the grosser distortions already in place. For example it used to state that RF refused to countenance a helical shape for DNA, this is an incorrect statement. It stated that the C+W model was 'largely their own work', this is also incorrect. I included some reference to the 'A' and 'B' forms of DNA as the C+W model is of the 'B' form which RF was not working on. I think it's not unreasonable to suggest that this is not the place for a defence of C+Ws activities, let's stick to the point, which is not DNA and not C+W but is RF, you seem to want to define her narrowly and against someone else's achievements, not her own.--Alun 17:30, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
OK well I'm not going to fight hand to hand on this - I'll come back and reread it in a few days time. But I don't think characterising anyone's motivation as childish (as distinct from childlike or enbthusiastic etc) is sufficiently objective. You've made some good points but the overal effect of your contribution on first reading is to me to make the sound of grinding axes - sorry - Bob
Maybe I phrased it in a misleading way. It is meant to be taken that the behaviour was apparently childish to RF. Also note the word apparently, this is not meant as a judgement, sorry if it's not clear what I meant, I'll try to make it sound less like an oppinion.--Alun 15:34, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)