Rosalind Franklin was an equal partner in DNA structure discovery

That Rosalind Franklin failed to get the recognition she deserved in the discovery of DNA structure is beyond doubt. Others stole the limelight, including a Nobel Prize, and which was par for the course in 1950s science. But a previously overlooked letter and unpublished news article show that Franklin played an equal part in the quartet with James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins who solved the puzzle.

Franklin is often portrayed as a brilliant experimentalist who for months failed to grasp the significance of her X-ray image of DNA. In this popular account, it took the genius of Watson to comprehend the image at a glance, in some kind of ‘eureka moment’. It was, so the story goes, three brilliant chaps who uncovered the philosopher’s stone of molecular biology.

In reality, a news article written by Joan Bruce in 1953, meant for publication in Time magazine, reveals that Franklin knew full well what the X-ray image implied. Her equal contribution to the research is also confirmed by a letter from one of Franklin’s colleagues to Crick.

The story is outlined in a comment article1 in Nature by Matthew Cobb and Nathaniel Comfort, who say that Franklin was “an equal member of a quartet who solved the double helix”. Along with Wilkins, she was “one half of the team that articulated the scientific question, took important early steps towards a solution, provided crucial data and verified the result”.

Cobb and Comfort add that getting Franklin’s story right is crucial: “She was up against not just the routine sexism of the day, but also more subtle forms embedded in science — some of which are still present today.”