Letter to the editor: A woman, not men, discovered DNA’s double helix structure – The Sun Chronicle

To the editor:

It never ceases to irritate me to read an article about scientists James Watson and Francis Cricks discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. (Todays Highlight in History, The Sun Chronicle, Page A8)

Well, here is the real deal.

British scientist Rosalind Franklin brilliantly produced an X-ray of the molecular structure of DNA, using X-ray crystallography. At this point Watson and Crick hadnt a clue to its structure.

A sneaky male colleague in Franklins lab provided Watson and Crick a look-see at the DNA photo #51 and her unpublished data. Did she know? History says, not likely.

As a result, Watson and Crick published a paper regarding this info in 1953. Eventually, Watson and Crick and another scientist, Maurice Wilkins, shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for describing DNAs double-helix structure.

Franklin died in 1958, making her ineligible for a Nobel Prize. Watson and Crick got the credit.

Gail Boone

Wrentham

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Letter to the editor: A woman, not men, discovered DNA's double helix structure - The Sun Chronicle