Three Back-To-Back Publications On The Structure Of DNA

In April 1953, the journal Nature published three back-to-back publications on the structure of DNA, a major breakthrough in biology. The first article was a pure theoretical one written by Watson & Crick from University of Cambridge and the other two articles were experimental rich by Rosalind Franklin and a PhD students Ray Gosling from King’s college, London. These papers laid a foundation for the structure of DNA and eventually fetched Nobel price in 1962 and Rosalind Franklin did the groundbreaking work on the structure of DNA.
The whole story started with a bitter note when Franklin, an expert in X-ray crystallography, had been recruited to King’s to work as an independent researcher. Prof. Maurice Wilkins expected that Franklin would

That point Watson and Crick needed was far more than the idea of a helix – they needed precise observations from X-ray crystallography. Theoreticians need data and Franklin had them in the form of X-ray data. She included her data in a brief informal report that was given to Max Perutz of Cambridge University. In February 1953, Perutz passed the report to Bragg, and thence to Watson and Crick.
Watson & Crick now had the data he needed to do his calculations. Since the report was not confidential, there is no question that the Cambridge duo acquired the data dishonestly. However, they did not tell anyone at King’s what they were doing, and they did not ask Franklin for permission to interpret her data. This is where Franklin’s whole credibility was just denied or

To prove her point, she would have to convert this insight into a precise, mathematically and chemically rigorous model. She did not get the chance to do this, because Watson and Crick had already been working and were the first one on the finishing line – the Cambridge duo had rapidly interpreted the double helix structure in terms of precise spatial relationships and chemical bonds, through the construction of a physical model.
In the middle of March 1953, Wilkins and Franklin were invited to Cambridge to give their opinion on the proposed model of DNA, and they both agreed it must be right. There was also a mutual agreement that the model would be published solely as the work of Watson and Crick, while Wilkins and Franklin would publish the supporting data separately. On 25 April there was a party at King’s to celebrate the publication of the three articles in Nature. Franklin did not attend because of her illness with ovarian cancer. She died of the disease in