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It describes how misogyny, dismissive portrayals in Watson’s The Double Helix, and competing feminist interpretations helped form an enduring “Franklin myth,” then points toward later biographical reassessments of the facts.",{"@graph":14,"@context":71},[15,34,54],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & 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bmaddox@pitt.demon.co.uk](e-mail: bmaddox@pitt.demon.co.uk))  \nIn 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA. Notably absent from the podium was Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray photographs of DNA contributed directly to the discovery of the double helix. Franklin’s premature death, combined with misogynist treatment by the male scientific establishment, cast her as a feminist icon. This myth overshadowed her intellectual strength and independence both as a scientist and as an individual.  \nI  \nn late February 1953, Rosalind Franklin, a 33-year-old physical chemist working in the biophysics unit of King’s College in London, wrote in her notebooks that the structure of DNA had two chains. She had already worked  \nout that the molecule had its phosphate groups on the outside and that DNA existed in two forms.  \nTwo weeks later James Watson and Francis Crick, atthe Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, built their now celebrated model of DNA asa double helix. They did it not only through brilliant intuition and a meeting of compatible minds, but also on the basis of Franklin’sunpublished experimental evidence, which had reached them through irregular routes. She did not know that they had seen either her X-ray photograph (Fig. 1), showing unmistakable evidence of a helical structure, or her precise measurements of the unit cell (the smallest repeating unit) of the DNA crystal.  \nAs Watson was to write candidly,“Rosy, of course, did not directly give usher data. For that matter, nooneat King’s realized they were in our hands.” When this admission appeared in Watson’s best-selling, much-acclaimed book of the discovery, The Double Helix, published in 1968 (ref. 1), he was a Harvard professor and Nobel laureate (he had shared the prize for medicine and physiology in 1962, with Crick and Maurice Wilkins of King’s College.) By then Franklin had died—in 1958, at the age of 37, from ovarian cancer.  \nOther comments dismissive of“Rosy” in Watson’s book caught the attention of the emerging women’s movement in the late 1960s.“Clearly Rosy had togo orbe putin her place […] Unfortunately Maurice could not see any decent way to give Rosy the boot”. And,“Certainly abad way to go out into the foulnessofa […] November night was to be told by a woman to refrain from venturing an opinion about a subject for which you were not trained.”  \nA feminist icon  \nSuch flamboyantly chauvinist phrases were sufficient to launch the legend of Franklin, the wronged heroine. So too was Watson’s insistence onjudging Franklin by her appearance rather than by her performance as a scientist. (She was, when she came toKing’s from the French government laboratory where she had worked from 1947 to the end of 1950, a recognized expert on  \n“Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, forme, givesa partial explanation of life. Insofar as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment.” Rosalind Franklin, ina letter to her father, summer 1940.  \nthe structure of coals, carbonsand disordered crystals, with many publications to her credit.)  \nThe Franklin myth has continued to grow, abetted by the fact of her tragically early death. Franklin has become a feminist icon—the Sylvia Plath ofmolecular biology — seen as a genius whose gifts were sacrificed to the greater glory ofthe male. Her failure to win the Nobelprize has been givenasa prime example  \n[NATURE](NATURE | VOL 421 | 23 JANUARY 2003 | www.nature.com/nature)[ |](NATURE | VOL 421 | 23 JANUARY 2003 | www.nature.com/nature)[ VOL 421](NATURE | VOL 421 | 23 JANUARY 2003 | www.nature.com/nature)[ |](NATURE | VOL 421 | 23 JANUARY 2003 | www.nature.com/nature)[ 23 JANUARY 2003](NATURE | VOL 421 | 23 JANUARY 2003 | www.nature.com/nature)[ |](NATURE | VOL 421 | 23 JANUARY 2003 | www.nature.com/nature)[ www","cbCaisEYpNSENtg2","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaisEYpNSENtg2","pdf",133955,"English","# Background: DNA and Nobel recognition\n## Franklin’s missing podium\n# The 1953 timeline and evidence\n## Watson and Crick’s model building\n## Franklin’s unpublished data\n# The “wronged heroine” legend\n## Dismissive portrayals and feminist reception\n# Competing narratives and reassessment\n## Anne Sayre’s corrective account\n## Reconsidering Franklin’s circumstances","[{\"question\":\"Why was Rosalind Franklin absent from the Nobel prize podium in 1962?\",\"answer\":\"The text states that Rosalind Franklin was notably absent despite her X-ray photographs of DNA contributing to the discovery of the double helix.\"},{\"question\":\"What role did Franklin’s experimental evidence play in Watson and Crick’s DNA model?\",\"answer\":\"It explains that Watson and Crick built their double-helix model in Cambridge using Franklin’s unpublished experimental evidence reached through irregular routes, including X-ray images and measurements of the DNA crystal.\"},{\"question\":\"How did Watson’s book influence the legend of Franklin as a wronged heroine?\",\"answer\":\"The document says dismissive comments in Watson’s best-selling The Double Helix, including judging Franklin by appearance, fueled the emerging women’s movement and helped launch the Franklin legend.\"}]","The Double Helix and the Wronged Heroine - Brenda Maddox | PDF"]