Re: Celebrating birthday of Rosalind Elsie Franklin

Mike Dworetsky <platinum198@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"rmj" <glenna@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:jNVpi.10865$rR.5923@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<justsomebody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:13afjd8etu0bb97@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
If it weren't for her analysis of x-ray diffraction of DNA,
Watson and Crick might not have been first with correct double-helix
model.

Any other important birthdays coming up before August 1?


Did she anayze it, or was it a case of being talented at getting
diffraction pictures?

As I recall from some reading, it was her photos and the measurement of a
crucial length in the structure that was passed to Crick and Watson without
her knowledge. This information led them to realise that they were
constructing their model incorrectly, and the revised structure gave them
the double helix model.

Rosalind Franklin had come up with the idea of a helical DNA structure in
her notes but hadn't published it yet as she was doing more experiments.
Her approach was observational, while their approach was to take the basic
amino acids and model what structures might emerge from their bonding
properties.

And yes, she was the very best of x-ray crystallographers of her generation.
No one else was getting results of that quality. If she had lived long
enough I think she would have shared the Nobel.

Almost certainly not.
Nobel stipulated that only three can share his prize.
You can't have Crick without Watson,
and Wilkins and Franklin have an equally good claim.
OTOH Crick and Watson coulnd't have done anything
without Franklin's data.

Rosalind's untimely death got the Nobel committee
out of a very difficult dilemma,
which might well have ended with no nobel at all.
(as has happened in the case of the electron spin)

OTOH the Nobel committee has been known for sexist bias,
(Lise Meitner was excluded from Hahn's Nobel for example,
despite them doing the work together)
so it is quite possible that another Nobel scandal
would have resulted from bypassing Rosalind Franklin too.

We'll never know,

Jan



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Evolution and Observation Gap
    ... in which Crick & Watson made their breakthrough. ... refering to the Nobel prize story. ... Your sense of history is as flawed as your analogy. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Im sure Springsteen is gonna be all over this, right?
    ... The famous scientist James Watson is on a book tour with his memoire ... Rosalind Franklin and the, "perhaps", less than honest way he got hold ... Crick and Watson relied on two key pieces of information that were due ...
    (rec.music.artists.springsteen)
  • Re: Oh yeah -- and Islam didnt give us arabic numerals
    ... Watson and Crick on line one. ... But they didn't do the science. ... She didn't get the Nobel ...
    (rec.sport.football.college)
  • Re: my name is tom potter, and i am a moron
    ... Newton, Faraday, Edison, Galileo, Volta, Watson and Crick. ... Forty years after their discovery of DNA's secret, ... Thanks to genetics, the pharmaceutical industry is exploding with new ideas ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: 50 years from now...
    ... DNA is not important (Discovered more than 140 years ago, ... Such are the working of science and for those familiar with it, ... Otherwise you would have known that it was not Watson & Crick that ...
    (talk.origins)