But Franklin persisted on the DNA project. Bernal called her X-ray photographs of DNA, "the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken. She was beaten to publication by Crick and Watson in part because of the friction between Wilkins and herself.
When he saw the picture, the solution became apparent to him, and the results went into an article in Nature almost immediately.
Franklin's work did appear as a supporting article in the same issue of the journal. A debate about the amount of credit due to Franklin continues. What is clear is that she did have a meaningful role in learning the structure of DNA and that she was a scientist of the first rank. Franklin moved to J. Bernal's lab at Birkbeck College, where she did very fruitful work on the tobacco mosaic virus. Their excellence was the fruit of extreme care in preparation and mounting of the specimens as well as in the taking of the photographs.
Despite her cautious and diligent work ethic, Franklin had a personality conflict with colleague Maurice Wilkins, one that would end up costing her greatly.
The two scientists did, in fact, use what they saw in Photo 51 as the basis for their famous model of DNA, which they published on March 7, , and for which they received a Nobel Prize in Crick and Watson were also able to take most of the credit for the finding: When publishing their model in Nature magazine in April , they included a footnote acknowledging that they were "stimulated by a general knowledge" of Franklin's and Wilkins' unpublished contribution, when in fact, much of their work was rooted in Franklin's photo and findings.
Randall and the Cambridge laboratory director came to an agreement, and both Wilkins' and Franklin's articles were published second and third in the same issue of Nature. Still, it appeared that their articles were merely supporting Crick and Watson's. According to Maddox, Franklin didn't know that these men based their Nature article on her research, and she didn't complain either, likely as a result of her upbringing.
Franklin "didn't do anything that would invite criticism … [that was] bred into her," Maddox was quoted as saying in an October NPR interview. Franklin left King's College in March and relocated to Birkbeck College, where she studied the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus and the structure of RNA. Because Randall let Franklin leave on the condition that she would not work on DNA, she turned her attention back to studies of coal. In five years, Franklin published 17 papers on viruses, and her group laid the foundations for structural virology.
In the fall of , Franklin discovered that she had ovarian cancer. She continued working throughout the following two years, despite having three operations and experimental chemotherapy. She experienced a month remission and worked up until several weeks before her death on April 16, , at the age of We strive for accuracy and fairness.
If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Norrish recognized Franklin's potential but he was not very encouraging or supportive toward his female student.
CURA was a young organization and there was less formality on the way research had to be done. Franklin worked fairly independently, a situation that suited her. Franklin worked for CURA until and published a number of papers on the physical structure of coal. Franklin's next career move took her to Paris. An old friend introduced her to Marcel Mathieu who directed most of the research in France.
He was impressed with Franklin's work and offered her a job as a "chercheur" in the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'Etat. Here she learned X-ray diffraction techniques from Jacques Mering. In , Franklin was offered a 3-year research scholarship at King's College in London. With her knowledge, Franklin was to set up and improve the X-ray crystallography unit at King's College. Franklin arrived while Wilkins was away and on his return, Wilkins assumed that she was hired to be his assistant.
It was a bad start to a relationship that never got any better. Working with a student, Raymond Gosling, Franklin was able to get two sets of high-resolution photos of crystallized DNA fibers. She used two different fibers of DNA, one more highly hydrated than the other. From this she deduced the basic dimensions of DNA strands, and that the phosphates were on the outside of what was probably a helical structure. She presented her data at a lecture in King's College at which James Watson was in attendance.
In his book The Double Helix , Watson admitted to not paying attention at Franklin's talk and not being able to fully describe the lecture and the results to Francis Crick.
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