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Rosalind Franklin: DNA's unsung hero - Cláudio L. Guerra

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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.
Title:
Rosalind Franklin: DNA's unsung hero - Cláudio L. Guerra
Description:

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/rosalind-franklin-dna-s-unsung-hero-claudio-l-guerra

The discovery of the structure of DNA was one of the most important scientific achievements in human history. The now-famous double helix is almost synonymous with Watson and Crick, two of the scientists who won the Nobel prize for figuring it out. But there’s another name you may not know: Rosalind Franklin. Cláudio L. Guerra shares the true story of the woman behind the helix.

Lesson by Cláudio L. Guerra , animation by Chris Bishop.

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TED-Ed
Duration:
04:10

English subtitles

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