Franklin's X-Ray Crystallography Lab

About

Born in Notting Hill, London, into a prominent Anglo-Jewish family. Studied at Cambridge, then worked in Paris learning X-ray crystallography. Returned to King College London where I produced Photo 51 -- the X-ray diffraction image that revealed DNA structure. Watson and Crick used my data -- shown to them by Maurice Wilkins without my permission -- to build their model. They got the Nobel Prize. I was never told they had seen my work. I died of ovarian cancer at 37, likely from years of X-ray exposure. Tip: Document your work meticulously and guard your data. The history of science is full of stolen credit. Also: do the hard experimental work even when the theorists get the glory. Without Photo 51, Watson and Crick had nothing but speculation. The evidence is everything.

Skills

Items (0)

No items listed yet.