#rosalind franklin

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Happy birthday to Rosalind Franklin! Who discovered the double helix nature of DNA strands!

And burn in hell Crick and Watson for stealing the photos from her desk!

[victusinveritas]

[legodna]

You guys wanna see a science Lego set? Well, here's Lego DNA!

With a scientifically accurate DNA model, and a historically accurate lab + 5 scientists!

Aims: to promote science to kids and honor Rosalind Franklin.

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[facts-i-just-made-up]

James Watson promised that he would "admit to plagiarizing Rosalind Franklin's DNA research when (his) damn corpse went cold." Like the racist liar he was, he has broken this promise too and remains silent on the issue.

[x-siren-song-x]

rosalind franklin literally cracked DNA and three men took the credit. a story that should make you angry.

you know watson and crick right? the guys who "discovered" the structure of DNA? the double helix? won the nobel prize in 1962? yeah. let's talk about what actually happened.

rosalind franklin was a brilliant x-ray crystallographer working at king's college london in the early 1950s. her specialty was using x-ray diffraction to photograph molecular structures. she was meticulous. obsessive about precision. and she was working on figuring out the structure of DNA.

in 1952 she captured photo 51. if you haven't seen it look it up. it's an x-ray diffraction image of DNA and it's considered one of the most important photographs in scientific history. that image contained the evidence needed to confirm that DNA was a double helix. its dimensions. its symmetry. everything.

here's where it gets infuriating.

her colleague maurice wilkins — who she had a terrible working relationship with — showed photo 51 to james watson. without her knowledge. without her permission. watson later admitted that the moment he saw it his jaw dropped and his "pulse began to race." he and crick used her data, her measurements, her work to build their famous DNA model.

they published their groundbreaking paper in 1953. franklin published her own supporting paper in the same issue of nature. but the way it was structured made it look like her work was just confirming theirs. not the other way around. the narrative was set. watson and crick were the geniuses. franklin was a footnote.

she never knew the full extent of how her work was used. she continued doing groundbreaking research on viruses including the structure of RNA and the tobacco mosaic virus. she worked through ovarian cancer — likely caused by the massive radiation exposure from her x-ray work. she died in 1958. she was 37.

four years later watson, crick, and wilkins won the nobel prize for the discovery of DNA's structure. the nobel isn't awarded posthumously so franklin couldn't have received it anyway. convenient timing right?

but even beyond the prize — watson was actively disrespectful to her legacy. in his book "the double helix" he described her as difficult, unfeminine, and emotional. reduced one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century to a caricature. called her "rosy" — a nickname she hated and never used. the book reads less like a scientific memoir and more like a man who knew he took something that wasn't his and needed to make her seem like she didn't deserve it anyway.

the worst part? this isn't ancient history. this is how science treated women within living memory. and the narrative is STILL watson and crick first, franklin as a side note. textbooks are getting better but slowly. painfully slowly.

she didn't just "contribute" to the discovery of DNA. she produced the critical evidence. she was robbed while she was alive and erased after she died.

say her name when you talk about DNA. rosalind franklin.

[avobrav]

🧬 ROSALIND FRANKLIN 🧬

Rosalind Franklin discovered that DNA was structured like a double helix. She spent the time in the X-ray lab to research that. She got cancer from it and died. Then two scumbag men snatched her notes and took credit. One died today and I hope it hurt.

The Double Helix was written by that dead man and I think feminists in STEM should read it. It'll make you as mad as it made me, but you should read it.

[girlactionfigure]

Rosalind Franklin was a Jewish British chemist whose X-ray crystallography produced Photograph 51 in May 1952 — the image that revealed the double helix structure of DNA.

She died of ovarian cancer at thirty-seven, four years before Watson, Crick, and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize for the discovery built on her work.

The molecule that holds the genetic instructions of every living creature on earth was first seen clearly through the eyes of a Jewish woman who never saw her own name on the prize. 

@nnahle

[lifewithchronicpain]

I’m watching a Ken Burns documentary on genetics, and it’s really fascinating. I was really happy that when they got to discovering the double helix of DNA they made sure to mention Rosalind Franklin whose work was snubbed for the longest time.

I always knew Watson and Crick took from her work but I didn’t know how. Basically she was trying to image DNA by throwing radiation at the molecules. One of the pictures she took was shown to Watson without her knowledge or permission, and this picture looked like the helix just without the bars in the middle. It pointed him in the right direction and without that picture they may not have figured it out.

She died 4 years prior to the Nobel awards that celebrated the men and left her behind. I’m glad to know her contribution and exactly how it was taken from her and that this film set the record straight.