Who discovered the DNA double helix? The obvious answer is Nobel prizewinners Watson and Crick. The fellow scientists who aided them have all too frequently been forgotten – but not by Google, which today boasts a home-page doodle marking what would have been the 93rd birthday of British biophysicist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin.
The Google doodle includes Franklin’s face in the second ‘O’ and the DNA double helix in the ‘L’. The ‘E’ is a depiction of Photo 51 – the X-ray diffraction image that was instrumental in allowing Watson and Crick to crack DNA’s structure.
Franklin died aged 37 from ovarian cancer, four years before Watson, Crick and fellow researcher Maurice Wilkins won the 1962 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. Her death made her ineligible to share the prize.
Unfortunately for Franklin, her role in the groundbreaking discovery in 1953 was mostly overlooked. Crick later wrote that “the data which really helped us to obtain the structure was mainly obtained by Rosalind Franklin”.
At least the Google doodle is one small way of ensuring Rosalind Franklin can now get the recognition she deserves.
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