NEWS: Francis Crick, Co-Discoverer of DNA Structure, Dead at 88

GEEK: Francis Crick, Co-Discoverer of DNA Structure, Dead at 88

Francis Crick, Nobel laureate and the co-discoverer of the double-helical structure of DNA with James Watson and Rosalind Franklin, died today at the age of 88 from colon cancer.

The nature of DNA structure was, in 1953, the most pressing question in all of biology, and Watson, Crick and Franklin were in direct competition with the likes of Linus Pauling, who had already claimed a Nobel prize for his discovery of the alpha-helical motif in protein structure. Following his discovery Crick continued to work within the fields of molecular biology and biochemistry, making significant advances in the determination of protein strcture through x-ray crystallographic techniques.

Their groundbreaking scientific paper making public the three-dimensional structure of DNA has at its end of the most brilliant understatements in scientific history, "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material," in effect answering two of biology's biggest questions at once; what is the structure of DNA and how does it replicate?

considering the potential for the effect on the human condition ... watson/crick/franklin (and the people they stole their ideas off) could possible be the most important scientists of all time. more important than newton, einstein, hawking, etc...etc... combined

"Watson, Crick and Franklin were in direct competition with the likes of Linus Pauling"

?!?!

This would make it seem that Watson, Crick, and Franklin worked together.

They didn't.

In fact, Watson and Crick (literally) stole Rosalind Franklin's research and ignored her part in it at the same time.

And they didn't, to my knowledge, ever apologize for it, but it was acknowledged years down the road that Rosalind Franklin's research was vital, even the very key to figuring it all out. And yet no sympathy or apology was given by either, quite the opposite.

Its cold. I know. But I don't very much care for Watson nor Crick.

They took the credit for it. Nobel et al. And Rosalind Franklin was snubbed and ignored. She would die of cancer thanks to the x-ray research she performed, which findings were stolen by Watson and Crick to become Nobel Lauretes.

I might not know them personally, but this kind of ethics really grates me.

I'm not shedding a tear.

You can say that this is cold and not humane of me, but I am still not going to shed a tear over this.





[Edited on Jul 29, 2004 6:25PM]

Wow...umm ok at the risk of distastefulness...are there plans to clone him?

I see his frozen head on a rack right next to Ted Williams, you know, the "greatest frozen heads of the 20th century" frozen head rack.

Franklin died of ovarian cancer, and there was no indication that it was due to any x-ray radiation she received while performing research. This was decades after the death of Madame Curie, and the risks of x-rays were much better understood, so it is unlikely that she worked without at least shielding.

Rosalind Franklin was working in a competing lab. However it would be wrong to say that her work was stolen - she had done the initial crystallography but had not yet come to the right conclusion about the actual DNA structure. It took Watson and Crick to correctly interpret the work that Franklin had done. It is fair to say that they would not have been able to do it without her having generated the data, but it would also be fair to say that she would not necessarily have gotten the right answer for the structure without their input. She was actually pleased that her work was used by them.

As for the Nobel prize, the recipients do not have any say in who they share their prize with. In addition, Franklin died four years prior to the prize being awarded for the discovery, and a Nobel prize cannot be awarded posthumously, so it would not have been possible to include her as a co-recipient.

Crick was much more cordial about acknowledging Franklin's contribution in his later years than Watson - in Watson's autobiography and to this day he refuses to say anything positive about her. However, given the general consensus within the scientific community that while brilliant, Watson is an ass, the accepted opinion is that Franklin's work was a hugely important piece of this monumental discovery.

^^ Thanks for clearing that up. I was happy that you mentioned her in the article. Watson and Crick didn't necessarily steal, but they also didn't really do any of their own work. They took everyone elses current research (Franklinds X-ray chrystalography, Chargraffes rule of complimentary base pairing, etc), and put them all together to come up with the structure. So it always kind of irked me that they got all the credit. Anyway...

this morning, when my wife saw crick died yesterday, she was like "awwww....he was the cool one."
watson bugs the hell out of her.
crazy biologists....

but this is sad - it's always a bummer to see a rockstar go.