The woman who had discovered the molecular structure of DNA

Rosalind Franklin.

Most likely you have not heard her name.

– Who discovered the Double Helix structure of DNA ?

Watson and Crick. Every child knows the answer. 

– Wrong.

The 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine was awarded to James Watson, Francis Crick and  Maurice Wilkins for their discovery of molecular structure of DNA that revolutionised genes, genetic engineering and modern biology.

Again a mistake.

Rosalind Franklin the forgotten woman who discovered the double helix structure of DNA. 

Rosalind Franklin was a brilliant British biochemist and X-ray Crystallographer. In January of 1953 she wrote in her notebook that the structure of DNA had two chains. She had been able to take the first X ray Diffraction image of a DNA which clearly establishes the double helix structure.

•  January 1953– Rosalind Franklin takes the famous X-ray diffraction images of DNA- “Photo 51” that clearly establishes the double helix character of DNA. 
• Maurice Wilkins, her colleague at the Kings College of London with whom her relationship was not so good, shares her notes and the *Photo 51* to Watson and Crick working at the Cavendish Laboratory secretly. They utilised her data without her full knowledge or consent.
• April 1953– Watson and Crick published their paper on the double helix. Nobody except them knew that their paper was developed on the idea of Rosalind. 
• 1958 – Rosalind dies of Ovarian cancer prematurely at 37. Till her death she had no idea that she had given our world one of the greatest breakthrough in modern science.
• 1962 – the Nobel prize was awarded to Watson and Crick along with Wilkins who has stolen the idea from Rosalind.
• 1968 – Watson in his book Double helix acknowledge the fact that the idea of double helix was taken from the notes of Rosalind probably without her knowledge.