Four people in England back in 1953, stared at Photo 51,It wasn't much--a picture showing a black X. But three of these people won the Nobel Prize for figuring out what the photo really showed -the shape of DNA The discovery brought fame and fortune to scientists James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. The fourth, the one who actually made the picture, was left out. Her name was Rosalind Franklin."She should have been up there," says historian Mary Bowden." If her photos hadn't been there, the others couldn't have come up with the structure." One reason Franklin was missing was that she had died of cancer four years before the Nobel decision. But now scholars doubt that Franklin was not only robbed of her life by disease but robbed of credit by her competitors At Cambridge University in the 1950s, Watson and Click tried to make models by cutting up shapes of DNA's parts and then putting them together. In the meantime, at King's College in London, Franklin and Wilkins shone X-rays at the molecule . The rays produced patterns reflection the shape. But Wilkins and Franklin's relationship was a lot rockier than the celebrated teamwork of Watson and Crick, Wilkins thought Franklin was hired to be his assistant .But the college actually employed her to take over the DNA project. What she did was produce X-ray pictures that told Watson and Crick that one of their early models was inside out. And she was not shy about saying so. That angered Watson, who attacked her in return, "Mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. Clearly she had to  go or be put in her place." As Franklin's competitors, Wilkins, Watson  and Crick had much to gain by cutting her out of the little group of researchers, says historian Pnina Abir-Am. In 1962 at the Nobel Prize awarding ceremony, Wilkins thanked 13 colleagues by name before he mentioned Franklin, Watson wrote his book laughing at her. Crick wrote in 1974 that "Franklin was only two steps away  from the solution." No, Franklin was the solution. "She contributed more than any other player to solving the structure of  DNA . She must be considered a co-discoverer," Abir-Am says. This was backed up by Aaron Klug, who worked with Franklin and later won a Nobel Prize himself. Once described as the "Dark Lady of DNA", Franklin is finally coming into the light. What is the writer's attitude toward Wilkins, Watson and Crick?
Disapproving. Respectful. Admiring. Doubtful.