Why Was It Important That Rosalind Franklin Discovered The Structures Of DNA?
Despite the fact that Watson and Crick get all the credit for elucidation the structure of DNA, the reality is that Ms. Franklin’s X-ray crystallography work pointed them in the right direction…toward the double helix. Ms. Franklin was a careful researcher who wanted to be certain of her results before publishing. Watson and Crick got an advance look at her crystallographic images, which they correctly interpreted as a double helix. They then did the work of model building to demonstrate the now accepted correct structure of the molecule. The unfortunate thing is that Ms. Franklin died of cancer (likely caused by her exposure to X-rays in her chosen field of work) before her contribution could be recognized. Since Nobel Prizes can only be awarded to living recipients, she was aced out! Watson and Crick gave her work only passing credit for their discovery; in hindsight it is now understood that without her efforts, they likely wouldn’t have gotten to the structure that they did. Impo
