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DNA Pioneer Francis Crick Passes Away
Neil Halelamien writes "Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA with James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins, passed away Wednesday in San Diego. His co-discovery of 'the secret of life' made him one of the most influential scientists of all time. In more recent years, he shifted his research efforts from molecular biology to neuroscience, with a particular interest in the question of the neural basis of consciousness."
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure the discovery itself could not be patented. They could probably only patent the technology they used to make the discovery and any technology they developed using the discovery. Though I could be completely wrong...
I would like to take this moment to recommend Francis Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis to anyone interested in cognitive science. Although the theory of consciousness he espouses is somewhat uninteresting, the book does provide a good overview of the mechanisms by which the human brain functions, and it also describes the field of Cog Sci to some depth.
Whatever it is I'm complaining about, I'm sure the Republicans did it. This is
My understanding is that they didn't use any of their own raw data, but the data from Rosalind Franklin. More info.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
I know that this article is about the passing of Crick, but it's nice to hear Rosalind Franklin recognized for her significant role in the discovery of the structure of DNA. Certinaly, Watson and Crick did a lot of work ... but they get a lot of credit too, including a nobel prize. Franklin didn't even get credit at the time of discovery because her photographs had been shown to Watson without her knowledge and they (Watson, Crick, and Wilkins) rushed their article to publication.
Later on, more people learned of her contributions, but, sadly, she passed away in 1958 and was therefore ineligible for the 1962 Nobel prize that Watson, Crick, and Wilkonson shared. Without her name on the landmark publication or a Nobel prize, she has been largely forgotten.
To read more about her story, you should check out the book The Dark Lady of DNA.
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
Watson and Crick didn't use a microscope. Watson and Crick were (iirc) chemists who built models of molecules and tried to create a model that represented a chemical which had the properties of observed dna. When they did their work microscopes capable of looking at molecules up close and personal did not exist. X-ray crystalography was as close as it got. There was some lady in Britain who was working on the DNA problem at the same time, who (in some people's opinion, including mine, no disrespect to the honored dead) did most of the important work. Watson and Crick were close, but they put it all together after meeting with the a researcher in the same university department who shared the contents of her work. All of which makes me wish I could remember her name.
It was on PBS a couple months ago. Good documentary. Crick was reclusive but was interviewed for the occasion; he seemed very genuine and very very smart. Let's all think good thoughts about him or, failing that, drink a beer to his name.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
"...In more recent years, he shifted his research efforts from molecular biology to neuroscience, with a particular interest in the question of the neural basis of consciousness."
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Meanwhile Watson's concluded fat bald dark people have great sex. Oh how the mighty have fallen...
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file
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Well this is DNA, so there's no optical microscope involved.
Rosalind Franklin used X-rays to clarify DNA's structure. Her research was then shown to Crick and Watson without her knowledge, and the two men were then able to decypher the structure of DNA.
They got the Nobel Prize for their discovery. She wasn't included in the prize, even though she was critical in the discovery of the molecule's structure.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
They got the Nobel Prize for their discovery. She wasn't included in the prize, even though she was critical in the discovery of the molecule's structure.
Only living people can get the Nobel, and by the time of the prize, Rosie had died of cancer. There's no conspiracy.
There is a really awesome PBS documentary about the beginnings of our knowledge of DNA. I very highly recommend it to anyone with even the slightest of interest.
I can't seem to find it on PBS' page, (perhaps a better title than 'DNA' would have helped) but here is an MSNBC article about the series. It's 5 hour long episodes that covers the race to discover what DNA looked like all, the mapping of the human genome, and some really intersting discussions about the ethics of patenting DNA.
P.S. It's available on eDonkey if you can't find it on PBS' page to buy a copy either. Errr did I just say that?
It refers to 40 oz. of a "drinkable" liquid, usually "malt liquor". Pouring it on the ground for fallen friends is kinda a "gangsta" thing.
We can accuse Crick and Watson of not being generous in giving Rosalind Franklin the credit she deserved but the credit for the discovery belongs to them alone. Either Franlin did not make the deductions they did or she did but was slow to publish them (which in the world of science is basically the same thing). That said, Franklin would have probably gotten the Nobel prize had she lived long enough. The Nobel prize is never awarded posthumously - and she died four years before the prize was awarded. The real injustice in all of this is that Maurice Wilkins shared Nobel prize for his x-ray crystallography work. Most of the x-ray crystallography work that Crick and Watson had based their deductions on had been done by Rosalind Franklin. Wilkins was neither responsible for the data used to make the deductions nor for the deductions themselves. - HCE
Can you provide any evidence of Crick trying to prevent Franklin from getting due credit? Crick and Franklin remained friends up until her death and were frequent correspondents. Watson and Crick acknowledged Franklin in their original paper, which was published along with papers by Franklin and Wilkins in the same issue of Nature. A few weeks before Watson and Crick put the pieces together, Franklin went around her university hanging up signs declaring the "death of the double helix".
Let's be clear here, there were strong biases against women scientists at the time (and many still exist today). But she did not make the conceptual leap that Watson and Crick made. She never seemed to bear any ill will towards them, and was just happy that the truth was known. People in science get scooped all the time.
Sure, Watson made sexist and derogatory comments about Franklin in "The Double Helix", although one could argue that he made rude comments about nearly everyone involved. If you're angry at anyone, you should be angry at the Nobel committee who chose to wait until after Franklin's death to award the prize (which can't be awarded posthumously).
This has been a particularly rough month for biologists as we also lost the great Ed Lewis, Nobel prize winner and father of the homeobox.
A link to Nature's copy: Watson & Crick 1953 (HTML)
and a PDF
Both contain the original drawing of the structure, as done by Crick's wife Odile Speed.
Simon
henry -- the human evolution news relay
"How do you think we got here and were made."
Without a god.
So? What if Christians are wrong? What if something like the "soul" doesn't exist without a material brain to support it?
Crick's later research was based on that: try to find in what ways a consciousness can arise from a purely material neural network.
Read "The Astonishing Hypothesis" to see how Crick could truly make sense of what data is available...