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The discovery of the structure of DNA

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was one of the most important scientific
achievements in the last century,

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in human history, in fact.

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The now-famous double helix is almost
synonymous with Watson and Crick,

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two of the scientists who won
the Nobel Prize for figuring it out.

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But there's another name 
you may know, too,

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Rosalind Franklin.

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You may have heard that her data supported
Watson and Crick's brilliant idea,

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or that she was a plain-dressing,
belligerent scientist,

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which is how Watson actually described her
in "The Double Helix."

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But thanks to Franklin's biographers,

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who investigated her life 
and interviewed many people close to her,

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we now know that that account
is far from true,

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and her scientific contributions
have been vastly underplayed.

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Let's hear the real story.

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Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born
in London in 1920.

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She wanted to be a scientist ever
since she was a teenager,

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which wasn't a common or easy
career path for girls at that time.

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But she excelled at science anyway.

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She won a scholarship to Cambridge
to study chemistry,

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where she earned her Ph.D.,

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and she later conducted research on
the structure of coal

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that led to better gas masks for 
the British during World War II.

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In 1951, she joined King's College

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to use x-ray techniques to study
the structure of DNA,

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then one of the hottest topics in science.

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Franklin upgraded the x-ray lab
and got to work

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shining high-energy x-rays 
on tiny, wet crystals of DNA.

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But the acadmemic culture at the time
wasn't very friendly to women,

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and Franklin was isolated 
from her colleagues.

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She clashed with Maurice Wilkins,

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a labmate who assumed Franklin
had been hired as his assistant.

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But Franklin kept working,

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and in 1952, she obtained Photo 51,
the most famous x-ray image of DNA.

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Just getting the image took 100 hours,

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the calculations necessary to analyze it
would take a year.

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Meanwhile, the American biologist
James Watson

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and the British physicist Francis Crick

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were also working 
on finding DNA's structure.

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Without Franklin's knowledge,

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Wilkins took Photo 51
and showed it to Watson and Crick.

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Instead of calculating the exact
position of every atom,

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they did a quick analysis 
of Franklin's data

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and used that to build 
a few potential structures.

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Eventually, they arrived at the right one.

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DNA is made of two helicoidal strands,

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one opposite the other with bases
in the center like rungs of a ladder.

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Watson and Crick published their model
in April 1953.

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Meanwhile, 
Franklin had finished her calculations,

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come to the same conclusion,

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and submitted her own manuscript.

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The journal published 
the manuscripts together,

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but put Franklin's last,

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making it look like her experiments just
confirmed Watson and Crick's breakthrough

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instead of inspiring it.

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But Franklin had already 
stopped working on DNA

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and died of cancer in 1958,

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never knowing that Watson and Crick
had seen her photographs.

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Watson, Crick, and Wilkins won
the Nobel Prize in 1962

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for their work on DNA.

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It's often said that Franklin would have
been recognized by a Nobel Prize

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if only they could be 
awarded posthumously.

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And, in fact, it's possible 
she could have won twice.

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Her work on the structure of viruses
led to a Nobel for a colleague in 1982.

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It's time to tell the story of a brave
woman who fought sexism in science,

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and whose work revolutionized
medicine, biology, and agriculture.

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It's time to honor 
Rosalind Elsie Franklin,

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the unsung mother of the double helix.