Now, two historians are suggesting that whereas components of that story are correct — Watson and Crick did depend on analysis from Franklin and her lab with out their permission — Franklin was extra a collaborator than only a sufferer. In an opinion article revealed Tuesday within the journal Nature, the historians say the 2 totally different analysis groups have been working in parallel towards fixing the DNA puzzle and knew extra about what the opposite group was doing than is broadly believed.

“It’s much less dramatic,” mentioned article writer Matthew Cobb, a zoologist on the University of Manchester who’s engaged on a biography of Crick. “It’s not a heist movie.”

The story dates again to the Fifties, when scientists have been nonetheless understanding how DNA’s items match collectively. Watson and Crick have been engaged on modeling DNA’s form at Cambridge University. Meanwhile, Franklin — an skilled in X-ray imaging — was finding out the molecules at King’s College in London, together with a scientist named Maurice Wilkins.

It was there that Franklin captured the long-lasting Photograph 51, an X-ray picture displaying DNA’s criss-cross form. Then, the story will get difficult. In the model that’s typically informed, Watson was in a position to have a look at Photograph 51 throughout a go to to Franklin’s lab. According to the story Franklin hadn’t solved the construction, even months after making the picture.

But when Watson noticed it, “he suddenly, instantly knew that it was a helix,” mentioned writer Nathaniel Comfort, a historian of medication at Johns Hopkins University who’s writing a biography of Watson. Around the identical time, the story goes, Crick additionally obtained a lab report that included Franklin’s information and used it with out her consent.

And based on this story, these two “eureka moments” — each based mostly on Franklin’s work — Watson and Crick “were able to go and solve the double helix in a few days,” Comfort mentioned. This “lore” got here partially from Watson himself in his e book “The Double Helix,” the historians say.

But the historians counsel this was a “literary device” to make the story extra thrilling and comprehensible to put readers. After digging in Franklin’s archives, the historians discovered new particulars that they are saying problem this simplistic narrative — and counsel that Franklin contributed greater than only one {photograph} alongside the way in which.

The proof? A draft of a Time journal story from the time written “in consultation with Franklin,” however by no means revealed, described the work on DNA’s construction as a joint effort between the 2 teams. And a letter from one among Franklin’s colleagues advised Franklin knew her analysis was being shared with Crick, authors mentioned.

Taken collectively, this materials suggests the 4 researchers have been equal collaborators within the work, Comfort mentioned. While there might have been some tensions, the scientists have been sharing their findings extra brazenly — not snatching them in secret.

“She deserves to be remembered not as the victim of the double helix, but as an equal contributor to the solution of the structure,” the authors conclude. Howard Markel, a historian of medication on the University of Michigan, mentioned he’s not satisfied by the up to date story.

Markel — who wrote a e book in regards to the double helix discovery — believes that Franklin acquired “ripped off” by the others they usually lower her out partially as a result of she was a Jewish girl in a male-dominated area. In the tip, Franklin left her DNA work behind and went on to make different essential discoveries in virus analysis, earlier than dying of cancer on the age of 37. Four years later, Watson, Crick and Wilkins obtained a Nobel prize for his or her work on DNA’s construction.Franklin wasn’t included in that honor.

Posthumous Nobel prizes have all the time been extraordinarily uncommon, and now aren’t allowed. What precisely occurred, and in what order, will seemingly by no means be identified for positive. Crick and Wilkins each died in 2004. Watson, 95, couldn’t be reached and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the place he served as director, declined to touch upon the paper.

But researchers agree Franklin’s work was crucial for serving to unravel DNA’s double helix form — irrespective of how the story unfolded.“How should she be remembered? As a great scientist who was an equal contributor to the process,” Markel mentioned. “It should be called the Watson-Crick-Franklin model.”