Rosalind Franklin’s
work with DNA started in 1951 when she went to work as a research
associate for John Randall at Kings College. It was there that
Randall gave Franklin the complex task of finding the structure
of DNA. After doing a complicated study of the X-ray she was the
first to state that the sugar-phosphate backbone of DNA lies on
the outside of the molecule. She also showed the basic helical
structure of a DNA molecule.
John Randall presented Franklin’s data and unpublished
conclusions at a routine seminar after which her work was given
to her competitors at Cambridge University, James Watson and
Francis Crick, without the knowledge of Randall. Watson and Crick
used the data along with some from other scientists to make their
detailed description of the structure of DNA in 1953. Franklin
did not get upset, but set out to publish a report confirming the
Watson-Crick model.
Although Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins won the Novel Prize
in 1962 for the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure
Rosalind Franklin never recieved the cretit she deserved because
of her untimely death.