Scientist Study - Watson & Crick

[science_spot]

James Watson and Francis Crick are among the most famous scientists to have ever lived.   In 1962 they shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Maurice Wilkins, "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".  In this case, the nucleic acids they mention is DNA.  In order to really appreciate what these men discovered, you should be familiar with my first two posts on DNA - The Basics of DNA, and How DNA does it's "thing".

A visit to the Nobel Prize website above will give you access to a biography of each of these men (I won't go into the details, except those that pertain to the DNA structure work they did).  In 1951, Watson first met Wilkins; Wilkins shared with him some unpublished data showing the x-ray diffraction pattern of crystalline DNA.  This information sparked Watson's interest in determining the molecular structure of DNA.  Soon after, Watson met Crick and together, knowing the diffraction information and some chemical basics of polynucleotide chain arrangements, they guessed at the structure of DNA.  Upon further inspection, they proved their guess to be wrong.  At this point, using additional information, they drew a new arrangement, the complementary double helix.  They published their work in the journal Nature in April of 1953.  Theirs was one of 3 papers published in that issue, outlining the evidence of the helical DNA structure (the other two by Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin).  In May, they published another paper, outlining the details of the copying mechanism (replication) made possible by the complementary structure of the DNA.

It seems in recent years, alot of people have been very upset at Watson and Crick because Rosalind Franklin did not share the Nobel Prize.  In fact, they would  have had no control over whether she was nominated or not.  All discussion of her nomination would be unnecessary anyway, because she had died in 1958, and the Nobel Prize is never nominated or awarded to anyone no longer living.

One thing Watson and Crick did have control over is how the acknowledged that Franklin's data influenced their work that led to the Nature publication.  They had received Franklin's x-ray diffraction data from Wilkins, without her consent, although she had presented the preliminary data at a conference earlier that year, where Watson was in attendance.  Watson and Crick acknowledged later that the data played an important role in their work to understand the DNA structure, and had, at the time, offered Wilkins a co-authorship in order to show this fact (they had never worked with Franklin).  He declined because his contribution had little to do with the bulk of their published work.  Of course, Watson and Crick could have cited this data as a 'personal communication', and for whatever reason chose not to.   Even so, her death is the reason she did not receive a Nobel Prize nomination along with the men.  Although Wilkins also received the prize, his name is rarely spoken along with Watson and Crick because he did not have anything to do with their model or their description of the copying mechanism which has become so important to our world of molecular biology today.

 

The picture below is Watson and Crick's original DNA model, taken from the CSHL (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories) picture archives.

 

 

Tonya

AKA sunmoonstars

The Science Spot

 

 

 

[MythicMMM]

Jul. 8, 2009 at 8:35 AM

It's BeaUtiful! ~sits slack jawed in awe~

[jramsaran]

Jul. 8, 2009 at 8:40 AM i have been a fan of Rosalind's work since high school. I am happy that now-a-days, even though she didn't get the NP, most science classes acknowledge her work and contribution.

[evwsquared]

Jul. 8, 2009 at 3:24 PM

I often put up a picture of Rosalind Franklin when I'm teaching scientific writing with the instructions to always cite your sources!

[momof3inTN]

Jul. 9, 2009 at 12:53 PM

Thank you for pointing out Franklin's contribution. My oldest wanted a science themed b-day party back in January and we made posters of famous scientists to hang on the walls for all the kids to learn a little something during the fun (what do you expect, we are a homeschooling family and all the kids invited were also homeschooled kids, LOL, all us parents decided to count the party time as school credit, LOL). Anyway, we made a poster about DNA and Watson and Crick and Franklin's involvement too. Some of the kids (and parents!) didn't even know about Franklin! I have to thank my husband though, he's working on his PhD in Biology and helped with all the posters.