The 1st myth is that watson and crick figured out the solved the double helix by themselves. The 2nd myth is that they stole Rosalind Franklin’s work and screwed her over. Both are misconceptions propagated by pop culture and Watson’s own embellishments…
Franklin was a great crystallographer who contributed many key insights into the characteristics of the double helix. There were many brilliant scientists working on this problem at the time pushing technology to their limits to gain every piece of information we could about DNA’s structure.
Franklin was a big name in her own right, and to say that Watson and Crick could figure out the double helix by stealing picture 51, whereas Franklin could not, implies that she couldn’t figure out her own data, and is frankly insulting to her intellect.
The 1st myth is that watson and crick figured out the solved the double helix by themselves. The 2nd myth is that they stole Rosalind Franklin’s work and screwed her over. Both are misconceptions propagated by pop culture and Watson’s own embellishments…
Franklin was a great crystallographer who contributed many key insights into the characteristics of the double helix. There were many brilliant scientists working on this problem at the time pushing technology to their limits to gain every piece of information we could about DNA’s structure.
Franklin was a big name in her own right, and to say that Watson and Crick could figure out the double helix by stealing picture 51, whereas Franklin could not, implies that she couldn’t figure out her own data, and is frankly insulting to her intellect.
This article explains it much better than I ever could: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5
Long but great read, thanks