Double Helix: How an Image Sparked the Discovery of the Secret of Life

Double Helix: How an Image Sparked the Discovery of the Secret of Life — page 3
helix structure in just a few hours by drawing on paper while sick in bed Franklin believed sketches or models could only come after meticulously collecting data She took careful measurements and made calculations based on her X-ray photographs of the DNA molecule Numbers and notes filled her notebooks not drawings Wilkins welcomed his friend Watson into his office He was glad for an opportunity to grumble about Franklin Though Wilkins and Franklin both studied DNA they competed rather than worked together The lab’s director John Randall had even given them separate workspaces and divided the DNA research so they could work independently Franklin enjoyed working alone but she also found King’s College old fashioned and unwelcoming Scientists gathered in a men-only commons room for lunch and discussion She wrote to a friend in Paris that at King’s there was nobody with whom I particularly want to discuss anything scientific or otherwise 3 Women including scientist Rosalind Franklin were not always welcomed to the male-dominated collegiate world Franklin refused to discuss anything scientific with Watson during his trip to the King’s labs Yet without knowing it she would help him and his Cambridge colleague Francis Crick make history Out of a drawer in his office Wilkins pulled an X-ray photograph made in the lab by Franklin and her assistant Raymond Gosling She had labeled it Photo 51 Without asking her permission and in a move that many scientists have said is unethical Wilkins showed it to Watson