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Rosalind Franklin They Stole Her Photo to Discover DNA
The most important photo in the history of biology was made in her lab. Two men saw it without her permission, and they won the Nobel Prize.
Rosalind Franklin was born in London in 1920 and knew at 15 that she wanted to be a scientist. In Paris she became an expert in X-ray crystallography, and in 1951 she joined King's College London to study DNA. In May 1952 her student Raymond Gosling took "Photo 51" under her direction, after about 100 hours of exposure: a blurry X that to a trained eye meant a helix. In January 1953 Maurice Wilkins showed it to James Watson without her knowledge. Watson and Francis Crick also saw a report with her measurements, and they built their famous double helix model. Their paper only briefly thanked her for her unpublished results.
Franklin moved on to brilliant work on viruses, then became ill with ovarian cancer. She died in 1958, aged 37. In 1962 Watson, Crick and Wilkins won the Nobel Prize; it is not given to the dead. In his book Watson called her "Rosy", a name she hated. Every DNA test, every vaccine and every crime solved with DNA goes back to that one blurry X.
The facts behind this file
What the record shows
- Born 25 July 1920 in London; studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, and worked in Paris from 1947 to 1950.
- Photo 51 was taken in May 1952 by Raymond Gosling under her supervision, at King's College London.
- In January 1953 Maurice Wilkins showed it to James Watson without her permission. Watson also saw her data in an MRC report.
- The 1953 Watson–Crick paper said they were 'stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results' of Wilkins, Franklin and co-workers.
- She died of ovarian cancer on 16 April 1958, aged 37. The 1962 Nobel Prize went to Watson, Crick and Wilkins; the prize is never awarded after death.
Legends, disputes & careful wording
- The 'about 100 hours' exposure of Photo 51 is widely reported.
- The X at the start of the episode is an illustration; the real Photo 51 is held by King's College London.
Main sources
- Watson & Crick, Nature (1953)
- James Watson, The Double Helix (1968)
Spotted a mistake or know a better source? Tell us.
Further reading
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Image & film credits
- Rosalind Franklin with microscope (1955) and in Paris: CC BY-SA 4.0 · "Dr Rosalind Franklin and Photo 51" display (geograph.org.uk): CC BY-SA 2.0 · Watson and Crick with Maclyn McCarty: CC BY 3.0 · Draft of the first Watson & Crick paper (Wellcome Collection): CC BY 4.0 · King's College DNA plaque: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photo 51 diagram: CC0.
- Other images are public domain (Maurice Wilkins, James Watson, the 1953 DNA model). The X pattern at the start is an illustration, not the original Photo 51. Video clips from Pexels. Music and sound made for this video.
