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."

Comments

Re:Aren't we forgetting someone?

[panurge]

We are and we aren't. Rosalind Franklin did some very good X-ray analysis, but did not make the theoretical leap of Watson and Crick and did not share the Nobel prize. You can put forward a number of reasons for this including the MCPiggery of the scientists of the time (and, skirting around the laws of libel, in my own completely idiotic and prejudiced opinion neither Watson nor Crick had the personality traits of the Dalai Lama.) However, many scientists have combined great talents with difficult personalities (Newton being a prize example) and we shouldn't allow this to predudice us against recognising their actual achievements.

Any great discovery tends to be associated with a number of important but lesser discoveries, whether of theory or technique, and it would be nice if we could recognise those appropriately rather than have to try and link them directly with the main advance.

In two other cases of the last century, I have heard Mrs. Einstein got the money from the prize in exchange for allowing Albert all the credit, and Scientific American and other journals continue to link Jocelyn Bell Burnell's name with Geoffrey Hewish's. The mills of God grind slowly, but they tend to get there eventually.