It is the subject of Photograph 51, a play by Anna Ziegler that starred Nicole Kidman on the London stage in 2015. This version of events has entered into popular culture. She supposedly sat on the image for months without realizing its significance, only for Watson to understand it at a glance. In this telling, Franklin, who died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at just 37, is portrayed as a brilliant scientist, but one who was ultimately unable to decipher what her own data were telling her about DNA. Known as Photograph 51, this image is treated as the philosopher’s stone of molecular biology, the key to the ‘secret of life’ (not to mention a Nobel prize). Lore has it that the decisive insight for the double helix came when Watson was shown an X-ray image of DNA taken by Franklin - without her permission or knowledge. They are also widely believed to have hit on the structure only after stealing data from Rosalind Franklin, a physical chemist working at King’s College London. The seminal paper from the pair at the University of Cambridge, UK, detailing the discovery of the DNA double helix, was published as part of a trio in Nature 70 years ago this week 1 – 3. James Watson and Francis Crick are two of the twentieth century’s most renowned scientists.
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