April 19, 2003
The Real Facts
of Watson and Crick
James D. Watson and Francis Crick announced, “We have
found the secret of life”. On February
28, 1953 Watson and Crick had figured out the structure of DNA in Cambridge
University, England.
James Watson graduated from the University of Chicago at 19 and got his
doctorate degree at 22. He studied “ornithology” but later changed to viruses.
After that, he even took another career turn because he attended a conference
in Naples. At this conference Watson saw a ghostly image of a DNA molecule
taken by X-ray crystallography. DNA (he had heard) might be the stuff genes are
made of.
Francis Crick, on the other hand, had not received his Ph. D by the age
of 35. Watson and Crick were once known
as the “Odd Pair”. Crick had changed
from Physics to Chemistry and Biology. He was fascinated by the line “between
the living and the nonliving”. Crick
and Watson shared an equal attraction to DNA, and when they ended up working in
the same lab, they bonded.
It was Watson who "wrote"
the alphabet for DNA. He constituted DNA's alphabet A., T., G., and C (or adenine,
thymine, guanine and cytosine). He discovered that an
adenine-thymine pair held together by two hydrogen bonds was the same as
guanine-cytosine pair. He also
realized when "C. A.T." is paired with a complementary strand "G.
T. A.," a new double helix had been built.
In a lab at King's College, London, a woman named Rosalind Elise
Franklin was creating the world's best X-ray photograph of DNA. Maurice Wilkins, a colleague who was also
working on DNA, disliked the feminist, Franklin. No problem, the feeling was mutual. This estrangement led Wilkins
to show Watson one of Franklin's best pictures yet. Watson was so surprised his
mouth fell open.
Out of the four scientists only Rosalind Elise Franklin had a
University Degree in chemistry. She
never made a model of her findings. Therefore, it was easy for Watson and Crick
to use her data. Franklin who died from
cancer at age 37 never was awarded the Nobel Prize because that award can only
be given to the living. She would have definitely gotten the prize instead of
Wilkins since she did all the key experimental work. She had narrowed this
structure down to a sort of double helix.
Maurice Wilkins played important role and got the 1962 Nobel Prize for
Physiology and Medicine, which he shared with Watson and Crick for the
discovery. If it wasn't for all these
dedicated scientists and their research, the DNA concept would not have been
discovered.