alt Hacker NewsHow did Rosalind Franklin miss the helix in her iconic DNA image? She didn't
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Clickbait headline which misframes the controversy, to nobody's benefit.
Helical DNA was the strongest candidate by 51, in part because earlier and cruder X-ray diffraction images had existed for some time (10+ years) and were suggestive of this structure. All of the scientists in question, and many others, collaborated on that possibility at that time, and long before 'Photo 51'. It was not a surprise, but rather the focus of their work.
Franklin was making the famous improved images with the explicit intent of revealing or disproving the helical structure. She and her lab produced the most definitive evidence for helical B-DNA (Photo 51) in early 52, but during 52 the conclusion was still a matter of debate (and humor) amongst them - in particular Franklin was not convinced that A-DNA was helical. From Wiki:
> In July 1952, as a practical joke on Wilkins (who frequently expressed his view that both forms of DNA were helical), Franklin and Gosling produced a funeral notice regretting the 'death' of helical A-DNA
This left the molecular structure and number of strands as open questions. Triple helix models had been attempted by Pauling, Watson and Crick at that time. Watson and Crick though were first to develop the successful double helix model with antiparallel base pairs in early 1953. It is likely that Franklin had also come to the conclusion that DNA was a double helix by this time (based on her draft notes + circumstantial evidence) but she did not do so in total isolation, nor did she complete the final molecular part of the puzzle (though she had worked on it).
TL;DR DNA structure was not a eureka moment spurred by a single breakthrough thought or piece of evidence; many scientists collaborated on eliminating various likely possibilities for years until the correct model was found.
I think this is a better article on the topic:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5
It seems like there are several different parts to the discovery of the "structure of DNA" and different people contributed.
1. DNA is helical
2. DNA is a double helix
3. The ACGT copying mechanism
Part 1 was Franklin and Wilkins. Part 3 was Watson and Crick. Part 2 is the part under debate, to what degree was the double helix clear from just Franklin's imaging?
But really, how much does it matter? It seems like the four of them each contributed a lot. The Nobel prize only went to the other three, in large part because Franklin died before it was given out.
> Science historian Alistair Sponsel of the Science History Institute and crystallographer Brian Sutton of KCL argue Franklin knew the earlier photo had revealed a helix—the epiphany Watson claimed for himself—and that is precisely why she made a second, more refined version, photograph 51.
It was Watson and Crick who discovered the double helix, even if Franklin did write something down about a single helix from a previous photo that they didn't read.
This is not a case where she was running to the scientific society saying “double helix!” and they told her to get lost. She was sitting on evidence. We’ll never know how long it would have taken her to figure out its meaning, but we know Watson was first to recognize it out loud.
If any of you have time, I’ll tell you how I invented Twitter, Reddit, and AI assistants.
So did Franklin provably realize the double-helix structure of DNA first or not? A lot of beating about the bush here but the article stops just short of actually explicitly making the claim it's working so hard to imply, AFAICT...
(edit: should note the HN submission title (at present "Despite what Watson said, Rosalind Franklin understood structure of DNA first") does not actually occur in TFA)
what? she was doing a form of crystallography that ONLY makes sense if it's a helix? Like, any time you are doing fiber diffraction it's pretty much "a helix". Who claimed she didn't realize it was a helix? I thought the claim was that she didn't recognize the significance of the helical parameters, which of course she couldn't, she wasn't a chemist and didn't have a model in mind with knowable parameters.
She might have measured those parameters, but she still didn't know what she had (as evidenced by how she subsequently spent a ton of time on Z-dna)
dupe, see older post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49998006
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Why does attributing any bit of mankind's progress to a specific individual matter? It matters because history is really boring if it's just about groups: we humans love individual human stories.
But, when some male jerk tries to claim they invented X or discovered X, but really a woman did so (something that is not unique to here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_effect) it's good for people to correct the mistake and properly attribute the person who really made the discovery/invention.
If I read Franklin's notes this establishes that she did in fact conceive of a double helix and base complementarity in the center (I can't see if she also recognized it was antiparallel).
That's the first actual evidence I've seen (I am a DNA nerd and have been trying to understand what her contribution to the intellectual discovery of DNA's double-helix antiparalel).
I would need to go back to Judson's book (Eighth Day of Creation) and see if he actually missed this.