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 5
shared ideas The simplicity of the image he had seen excited him When he got back to the lab he waited for Crick Francis did not get halfway through the door before I let loose that the answer to everything was in our hands 7 Watson said later But seeing the drawing based on Franklin’s superb photograph also worried Watson He supposed that if Pauling put one of his assistants to taking DNA photographs they might get one as clear as Photo 51 and in a week at most Linus would have then structure 8 Watson and Crick raced to be first in solving the mystery of DNA’s structure They had no time for data collection They would build a model in three dimensions Too impatient to wait for the lab machine shop to cut metal into model-making pieces to get started they used cardboard cutouts Francis Crick became a molecular biologist after first studying physics Franklin’s Photo 51 still left important questions unanswered It showed DNA was a helix but not how many chains twirled around each other like stripes on a candy stick It did not show whether the nitrogen bases fit inside the chains like ladder rungs or sprouted outward For several weeks the scientists arranged and rearranged the pieces in their lab ROSALIND FRANKLIN THE WOMAN BEHIND PHOTO 51 When 15-year-old Rosalind Franklin decided to become a scientist in the 1930s her father worried Most scientists at the time were men The British Royal Society which promotes scientific research was established in 1662 but did not admit a female scientist until 1945 Franklin studied chemistry at Cambridge University and went on to receive a PhD Cambridge really did for Rosalind everything that a good university should It gave her a profession a philosophy of life said her biographer Brenda Maddox She emerged a mature socially and politically aware individual and she was ready to become a working scientist 9 She soon won admiration for her early work in a Paris lab in the 1940s She