Sheril KirshenbaumDec 17, 2022

Rosalind Franklin’s research was crucial to discovering DNA’s double helix structure 🧬 but it was James Watson & Francis Crick who received the credit & Nobel Prize.

Unknown to Franklin, the pair saw her unpublished data & X-ray diffraction images, inspiring their model. They never acknowledged her contribution until after her death.

How many discoveries & innovations of #women do we attribute to the men who took credit for their ideas?

https://theconversation.com/sexism-pushed-rosalind-franklin-toward-the-scientific-sidelines-during-her-short-life-but-her-work-still-shines-on-her-100th-birthday-139249 #history #science #HistoryRemix

Sexism pushed Rosalind Franklin toward the scientific sidelines during her short life, but her work still shines on her 100th birthday

Franklin was born a century ago, and her X-ray crystallography work crucially contributed to determining the structure of DNA.

The Conversation
Show threadAdam Trickett  Dec 17, 2022

@Sheril To be fair to Watson, Crick and Wilkins, they all accepted that she deserved the credit, and they credit her, but you can't win a Nobel prize posthumously - so they were awarded and she wasn't but that wasn't their fault in that case.

She hasn't had the credit she deserved, and I agree with your observation that plenty of women have lost out over the years to male contemporaries.

Show threadPaul H (he/him)Dec 18, 2022
@drajt @Sheril I think the problem is that they never bothered to give her that credit when she was alive.
Show threadAdam Trickett  

@pjhenry1216 @Sheril Possible. I know if you read all their books around the double helix, it's clear that there was politics involved. Watson and Crick were treating it more of a race/game than Wilkins and Franklin.

Their papers in Nature were published back to back but it's 100% true that the media did and does tend to notice the loud ones over the quiet ones.

As a genetics graduate we were all told the story and Franklin was taught and credited.

Dec 19, 2022 at 11:45amWeb
Show threadPaul H (he/him)Dec 19, 2022
@drajt @Sheril it's great she's taught to a small niche of people (which most grad students are), but she's left out of the wider education in middle & high school, in the US in the 90s at least. So, might be incorrect to say C&W are responsible for the sexism, but pretending sexism didn't persist for decades in defining her legacy, or lack thereof, isn't the right way to address this either.
Show threadAdam Trickett  Dec 20, 2022

@pjhenry1216 @Sheril I can't speak for the US as I don't live there. I was taught about her in secondary school before I did my genetics degree.

Recently there was a campaign to have her on a new £50 banknote. Though that went to Alan Turing - who was hounded to death because he was gay.

I'm not saying there wasn't/isn't sexism/ageism/racism etc. I'm just saying things aren't as clear cut as some people say.