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50th Anniversary of DNA's Discovery
nxg125 writes "The New York Times has a section on the 50th anniversary of Watson & Crick's discovery of DNA. Lots of good articles about the discovery, Watson & Crick themselves, and where this information will take us from here."
Rosalind Franklin performed some important work that was ultimately built upon by Crick, Watson and Wilkins. Given more time she'd probably have reached the same conclusions, but the others got there first.
In science, the people who make the final discovery get more credit than the people who did the work that made this discovery possible. Chauvinism has nothing to do with it.
(On the other hand, Watson is one of the less pleasant people that I've had the poor fortune to meet)
"Wrong" grossly understates the complexity of Franklin's interaction with Watson/Crick. She was neither wrong nor right. She was doggedly neutral in assessing the structure of DNA. Franklin was wrapped up in the notion that the structure of DNA could only be discovered through X-Ray diffraction, and not through using the modelling approach that Watson and Crick ascribed to. Was was very, very, correct, however, when she discovered that DNA has two states: "zipped" and "unzipped". That served as a direct catalyst to Watson and Crick's break through. That would have gotten her the Nobel Prize, also, if she had survived long enough (it cannot be awarded posthumously).