Watson, Crick's breakthrough DNA discovery was based on Rosalind Franklin's work - PBS NewsHour

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Dr. Howard Markel, Author, "The Secret of Life": We are at the National Academy of Sciences, which is where the most celebrated scientists in America are members. But it was for a long time an old boys' club.

William Brangham:

Howard Markel is a doctor and medical historian, and in his new book, "The Secret of Life," he tells the famous story of James Watson and Francis Crick, who won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of the double-helix shape of DNA, which revolutionized the study of genetics.

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Prior to 1953, no one really understood heredity, genetics, how we pass on traits to our children or our grandchildren, not to mention all the issues that DNA led to in terms of RNA and mRNA viruses and vaccines and all the other stuff that we use for medicine today.

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William Brangham:

Rosalind Franklin knew and interacted with Watson and Crick back in the 1950s. She was at nearby King's College, doing similar DNA research. She was an expert in X-ray crystallography, the use of reflected X-rays and complex calculations to work out the structure of incredibly small objects. Markel documents how, without her knowledge, James Watson was shown one of her key X-ray diffraction patterns, and Crick was shown one of her progress reports. Armed with that information, the two men figured out that DNA's structure had to be a double helix, as Francis Crick later admitted.

Dr. Howard Markel:

He said: We didn't do the double helix because things go in pairs or something dreamy like that. We did it for a reason, because we had Rosalind's data. The reality is, is that, if life was fair, which it's not, it would be called the Watson-Crick-Franklin model.

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https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/watson-cricks-breakthrough-dna-discovery-was-based-on-rosalind-franklins-work