Explaining DNA

Discovery of the double helix
The discovery of the DNA double helix has entered scientific folklore. In Cambridge, brash American James Watson and brilliant Englishman Francis Crick were single-minded in their quest to understand the structure of DNA and the clues it might provide to life’s most fundamental processes. In London, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin were carrying out experimental studies on DNA, using X-ray diffraction techniques to gather insight into its three-dimensional shape.

In what turned out to be the crucial episode, Wilkins showed Franklin’s X-ray results to Watson. Immediately, Watson realized the significance of the results, dashed back to Cambridge and with Crick built the model that for the first time revealed to human eyes the structure of the molecule of life – the double helix.

Franklin never knew Watson had been privy to her results. Watson and Crick were reticent, to say the least, to acknowledge her contributions. Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize; by then Franklin was dead – ironically, of cancer probably caused by exposure to X-rays. The Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously and never to more than three people.

The case continues to attract endless debate and argument, ignited by Jim Watson’s pungent and racy account of the project in his book The Double Helix. Should Wilkins have shared her results? How important were they to Watson and Crick? Did they deliberately exclude her from sharing the credit?