Rosalind Franklin - another angle: the story of a famous scientific discovery and a forgotten woman.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the spatial structure of DNA known as the "double helix". To be precise, it is 60 years since the publication of the article by the two researchers Watson and Crick, who are known as the discoverers of this structure, in the journal NATURE - 25.4.1953/XNUMX/XNUMX - in which they first reported on it.

Shahar Ben Meir, The biological thought, 2013

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the spatial structure of DNA known as the "double helix". To be precise, it is 60 years since the publication of the article by the two researchers Watson and Crick, who are known as the discoverers of this structure, in the journal NATURE - 25.4.1953/XNUMX/XNUMX - in which they first reported on it.
The media referred to the 60th jubilee, including the Haaretz newspaper, which published an article on the 60th anniversary of the discovery in one of the Friday issues close to the jubilee, which was translated from the Guardian newspaper. In the same article, the author explained the essence and importance of the discovery, how the double helix structure is built and how this structure enables the coding of the genetic information.
The author of the Guardian article mentions two names in connection with the discovery of the double helix structure, Jim Watson and Francis Crick, who signed the original article in NATURE. Both also won the 1962 Nobel Prize for discovering the double helix structure. However, one name is missing from that article and that is the name of an English researcher named Rosalind Franklin.
Writing about the discovery of the double helix structure without mentioning Franklin's name at all is like writing about the history of the establishment of the State of Israel since the Balfour Declaration, with only Ben-Gurion's name and without mentioning Chaim Weizmann's name at all. And this comparison, in my opinion, "makes" an assumption in favor of the author of the article.
A scientific discovery, perhaps contrary to popular opinion, is not just a scientific issue per se. Scientific discovery, like all scientific work, involves social, cultural, personal questions and, in the current context, feminist issues.
There is no doubt that the discovery of the double helix structure is one of the most well-known and important discoveries of biological science of the twentieth century. To what extent this discovery raises equally important and fundamental questions of scientific ethics, of the exclusion of women from science, and even if we like, of "scientific theft". In this sense, the discovery of the structure of the double helix plays two important roles. It teaches us an important and essential thing about the world - how the genetic information is encrypted in the cell, and it also teaches us an important and essential thing about scientific practice - how this practice can be very far from the respectability associated with science and even worthy of condemnation.
Later in this article I will detail the part of that researcher who was not mentioned, Rosalind Franklin, in the discovery of the structure of the double helix, and I will also show how the ignoring of her place and department in the discovery, is not only the property of the Guardian after sixty years, but started right next to that article and of course after. In this sense the writer of the article in the Guardian is not unusual, he simply continues in the line drawn by Watson and Crick from April 53 onwards, according to which they appropriated the same discovery.
Rosalind Franklin was born in 1920 to an English Jewish family of high economic and social status. Herbert Samuel, the first British Commissioner to the Land of Israel - Palestine, was her father's uncle. Franklin, who was the second child and the first daughter in a family of five, began studying in 1932 at St. Paul's Girls' School in West London, a school known for its high level of education. In 1938 she was admitted to Cambridge and in 1941 she completed her studies for a bachelor's degree in her main department - physical chemistry. She continued her studies for an advanced degree and in 1945 she completed them and received her doctorate for research in the field of coal.
With the end of World War II, Franklin moved to work in Jacques Merang's laboratory in Paris, where she mainly studied the structure of coal and learned, while working, techniques of crystallography. Crystallography is an X-ray diffraction analysis to locate the exact position of the atoms in the material being studied. This knowledge will help Franklin later in his professional career and especially in deciphering the structure of the double helix. In January 1951, Franklin returned to England to the King's College laboratory, under the direction of John Randall, and there the drama begins.
Even before Franklin arrives at King's College, Randall sends her a letter to Paris, summarizing her role in the lab, and he explicitly informs her that "you will be the only one in the lab in the field of X-rays." Randall did not bother to deliver this message to a senior researcher in the lab named Maurice Wilkins who was in charge of this field before Franklin's arrival and even senior to her in terms of his position in the lab. This, of course, created enormous tension between these two researchers. Wilkins felt (in his view, perhaps rightly) that here comes a new researcher and another woman (much to the shame) who, on the one hand, occupies "his" domain, and on the other hand, does not feel or is willing to be subordinate to it. The shaky relationship at King's College, between Franklin and Wilkins, which began due to a lack of clear definition of the division of roles, continued to be undermined for other reasons. Although Franklin was younger than Wilkins (and of course a woman) it turned out that she was also a better researcher than him, both in terms of the technical skills of conducting the X-ray experiment and in terms of drawing the scientific conclusions from them. In England (and not only in it) of the XNUMXs, being a female researcher, and having better skills than the men next to you, was still considered an unpardonable sin.
As mentioned, at the beginning of 1951, Franklin began to investigate the structure of DNA using X-rays. DNA is an acid found in the nucleus of the cell (which is why it was called nucleic acid at the beginning) whose existence in the cell was discovered back in the 19th century by a Swiss researcher named Friedrich Miescher, who in 1869 succeeded in isolating this substance from the nucleus of the cell. From the beginning of the twentieth century, it was clear to researchers in the field that genes, the hereditary material of organisms, are located in chromosomes, which are (as was known then) a kind of tangle of proteins and nucleic acids found in the cell nucleus of every living being. Of these two components - the nucleic acids and the proteins - most researchers tended to believe that the proteins are the ones that can be used as the carriers of the genetic load, since only they have structural complexity and versatility that can, so it was assumed, carry the hereditary information. In contrast, the nucleic acids are "simpler" molecules and are not as complex as proteins, and initially were not considered as those that could be used as the carriers of the genetic load.
Despite this, two studies conducted in the XNUMXs led to the conclusion that it is possible that the genetic load in the chromosomes is actually in DNA and hence the importance of studying the structure of the molecule.
Franklin began conducting experiments on DNA taken from the thymus gland cells of young calves. She and her research student named Gosling managed in a short period of time to produce excellent quality images of the X-rays in which the DNA was bombarded. It is important to note that the image obtained from the X-rays is not an image of the molecule itself that is being studied, but is actually the reflection image of the X-rays hitting the atoms of the molecule. The position of the reflection points, their intensity, and more make it possible through the use of complex mathematical functions to determine the position of the atoms. The main and important work after that is to decipher the same image and try to deduce from it the position of each atom in the molecule.
With the help of those pictures and their decoding, Franklin realized quite quickly that DNA is organized in the form of a coil, but at this stage it was not clear to her how many "arms" this coil has, one, two or more. Another important thing she realized is which parts of the DNA are on the outside of the coil and which are on the inside. DNA consists of a long series (millions) of parts called nucleotides. Each nucleotide is made up of three subgroups - a sugar group, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. There are 4 different nitrogenous bases whose first letters are known as "letters" of the "genetic code" A,G,T,C - adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine. Franklin deduced from her experiments that the nitrogenous bases are on the inside of the helix, while the phosphate group is on the outside. This thing has a very important meaning in terms of the structure since it implies that the connection between the coils is probably made through the nitrogenous bases (as we will discover later).
In November 1951, a study day was held in the laboratory at King's College where every researcher, and Franklin among them, presented the findings of their research as of that time. At this point, one of the two official heroes, Jim Watson, entered the story. Jim Watson is an American researcher who completed his doctorate in zoology at Indiana University, and is in Cambridge after the postdoctoral phase. Luckily for him, he was "placed" in the same room with Francis Crick, a combination that gave both of them worldwide publicity, but we won't put the latter before the sooner. That same day, Watson boards the train in Cambridge and travels to London to hear the lectures of the seminar at King's College. He had known Wilkins Watson before, but he had never met Franklin. When Franklin begins the lecture on the results of her research on the structure of DNA, Watson is busy with something else. He wonders why Franklin is wearing such and such clothes and why she doesn't change her hairstyle. In doing so, Watson applies "practically" the statement of Simone de Beauvaeur, two years earlier in her book The Other Sex - "misogynists have often scolded intellectual women for "neglecting themselves".
Watson's preoccupation with Franklin's appearance and hairstyle obviously came at the expense of listening to her scientific findings. Therefore, when he returns to Cambridge and offers Crick to build a spatial model of the DNA based on what he supposedly heard in the lecture, they build a completely wrong structure of the DNA. After building this model, the Cambridge people invite the researchers of King's College to examine the structure. This invitation was requested because there was some gentleman's understanding (which was not fulfilled in the end) according to which in Cambridge they would deal with the research of proteins and in London with the research of nucleic acids, therefore the opinion of the King's people was of great importance. As soon as Franklin sees Watson and Crick's incorrect structure she dismisses it, as it does not at all match her findings of the structure of that molecule. Franklin's deadly criticism, which matched her direct and uncompromising nature, certainly did not contribute to the uneasy relationship between this young woman and the other male explorers in the story.
The "disruption" of the incorrect structure causes the head of the laboratory where Watson and Crick work, William Bragg, to order them to stop working on the structure of DNA and return to proteins. The aids that were used to build the wrong structure, sticks, fasteners and more purchased at a hardware store are stored in the basement of the laboratory. They will remain there until the beginning of 1953, when the second attempt will be made to build the DNA model.
Franklin continues her work throughout 1952, slowly and thoroughly she manages to produce better and better pictures of the DNA and try to understand from them what its structure is. In May of 1952, one of her photographs, which receives the serial number 51, clearly shows an image of a coil with two arms - a double coil. However, Franklin is a careful and thorough researcher, she is not in a hurry to jump to conclusions before she has the most data that can be deduced from the experiments, so she is still not convinced that this is the right structure, and continues with the experiments. This photograph will have another significant role later in the plot.

At the end of 1952, a delegation of researchers from the agency that finances the research in the laboratory, the "Medical Research Council" (MRC), visits the Beckins College laboratory to examine the progress of the research. One of the members of the delegation is a researcher named Max Perutz, who also works in Cambridge. Franklin (like the other members of the lab) gives the delegation a short written report on the progress of her research regarding the structure of DNA. In the same report, she details important and significant information regarding the structure of DNA, including the conclusion that apparently the DNA helices appear in opposite directions towards each other (imagine it like two fingers joined together, one pointing up and the other down). Although this report is not a "state secret", it is an internal report that is not intended for publication like an article in a scientific journal. This report will also play a very important role several months later.

At the beginning of 1953, Linus Pauling, the American researcher who is considered the greatest chemist of the twentieth century (and who also won the Nobel Prize twice, once in chemistry and the second time in the Nobel Peace Prize) publishes an article about the structure he proposed for DNA. Pauling's proposal is also wrong, similar to that of Watson and Crick about a year earlier, but the publication of the article greatly disturbs the people of Cambridge. Poling only a few years earlier had cracked the characteristic structure of proteins, the alpha helix structure, and here he was going to lay his hands on cracking the structure of nucleic acids as well. Or as Pauling's son Peter said, who at that time was in a year of study in the laboratory in Cambridge - my father beat you with proteins and in a little while he will also beat you with nucleic acids.

This causes Berg, head of the department, to allow Watson and Crick to return and try to propose a model of DNA. When these two investigators are released to go hunting, Watson boards the train to London again. He knows that only there, at King's College, will it be possible to find information that will help them try to rebuild the DNA model. Watson arrives at King's College and approaches Wilkins, who in turn shows him - without Franklin's knowledge or approval - the same photograph number 51, from which Watson immediately draws the conclusion that the coil is actually a double coil. Watson was shaken by what he saw and immediately returned by train to Cambridge to tell Francis Crick what he had seen. While still on the train, he writes down from memory the measurements and distances between the points that appeared in that photograph. Crick doesn't waste time either, he approaches Max Perutz and asks him for a copy of the Shapro report. received from Franklin only two months earlier, and from the report Crick deduces the directions of the DNA coils. Needless to say, Franklin had not the faintest idea that Photo 51 and her report were delivered directly to her competitors.

Thus, after collecting Franklin's experimental and research information, without her knowledge Watson and Crick build the correct structure of the double helix at the end of February 1953 and they publish it in an article in NATURE on April 25.4.1953, XNUMX.

Many scholars of the history of science wondered and still wonder why Franklin did not propose the double helix model in front of them if she had all the data. This question points to a facet of her personality and also to the boldness of her competitors. Franklin didn't believe in shortcuts. She came back and told Gosling, her research assistant, we will continue the experiments and filming until finally the results lead us to the right model. On the other hand, Watson and Crick dared to propose a structure that turned out to be correct with little experimental information and while being willing to draw bold conclusions from this partial information and there is no doubt that this is their greatness. However, and this is the main point, most of the experimental information and conclusions leading to the double helix structure, with the exception of the construction of the structure itself, were and were created and concluded by Franklin herself.
Watson and Crick did build and complete the last rung of the ladder, but all of its earlier rungs were built by Franklin herself.

Franklin left the laboratory at King's College in March 1953 mainly due to her poor working relationship with Wilkins. With her departure, it was no longer necessary to make use of the results of her experiments behind her back, and so, among others, Morris and Lykins to Crick in March about Franklin's departure, while explicitly expressing his opinion about her - "Our dark lady is leaving us next week, and all the information about the 3 dimensions is already in our hands."

Franklin moved to work on a study of the TMV virus (Tobacco mosaic virus)) in a laboratory in Birkbeck under the management of John Burnell. In the summer of 1956, ovarian cancer was discovered in her, and after a long period of treatments, which did not prevent her from continuing her scientific work almost until her last day, she died of her illness on April 16.4.1958, XNUMX.

Franklin's shadow, and the fear of discovering the fact that the structure of the double helix was largely based on her own work, continued to threaten the group of male explorers even after her death.

In October 1962 (4 years after Franklin's death), Watson Creek and Wilkins received the message (which was then sent by telegram and not by telephone as nowadays) that they were the winners of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the structure of the double helix. As you know, the Nobel ceremony was held in December of this year, and at the end of October, Crick sends two letters to his partners for the award. In those letters, Crick suggests to his friends what topic each of them will talk about in the Nobel lecture, which makes sense when there are three winners together. However, in both letters there is one almost identical sentence, in which Crick writes as follows - "I suggest that we do not talk about the historical context of the discovery". This sentence sounds rather puzzling to any reader who is not one of the three winners. If the discovery has no historical connection at all, why does Crick write them not to talk about it. And if it has a historical connection, why should it be hidden? But in terms of the relationship of silence between the writer of the letters and their recipients, the sentence is completely clear. Crick tells them in explicit words (which are well known to them) please don't mention Franklin even half a word, and indeed it was. Crick and Watson did not mention her a single word during their Nobel lecture. Only Wilkins mentioned her name but not in particular but together with mentioning the names of the other researchers in the laboratory at King's College whom he thanks in general.
And if we now return to the author of the article in the Guardian, from whom we started the story, it seems that he continues, even after five decades, to follow the instructions of Francis Crick, from October 1962 - please do not mention Rosalind Franklin when talking about the double helix.