Photo 51
Photo 51 is the nickname of a Laue diagram of DNA generated by Rosalind Franklin in 1952, which was generated with the help of X-ray diffraction . It was of fundamental importance for the later discovery of the DNA double helix structure by James Watson and Francis Crick and was created during Franklin's time at King's College in the research group of John Turton Randall .
Maurice Wilkins , who had received the photo without Franklin's express permission through his doctoral student Raymond Gosling , who had also taken it, showed the photo to Watson at the time. The photo played a crucial role in proving the postulated double helix structure of DNA, which was published in a series of five articles in the journal Nature in 1953 . For this work Watson, Crick and Wilkins received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine . Since the Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumously, Franklin was not nominated. An article by Gosling and Franklin in the same journal included the first publication of a clearer X-ray image of DNA.
Gosling was temporarily reporting to Franklin as a graduate student (without Wilkins knowing about it) before moving back to Wilkins.
Individual evidence
- ^ Secret of Photo 51 . nova
- ↑ Nova
- ^ Watson JD , Crick FHC (1953). " Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid " . Nature 171 : 737-738. Full text (PDF; 368 kB)
- ^ "The instant I saw the picture my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race." - James D. Watson (1968), The Double Helix , page 167. New York: Atheneum, Library of Congress card number 68-16217.
- ^ Double Helix: 50 Years of DNA. Nature archives. Nature Publishing Group
- ^ Franklin R , Gosling RG (1953) Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate. In: Nature 171 : 740-741. Full text (PDF; 341 kB)
- ↑ Matthew Cobb, Sexism in science: did Watson and Crick really steal Rosalind Franklin's data? , The Guardian, June 23, 2015