Regarding the Watson and Crick reference: it helps when you have other people like Rosalind Franklin working through the nights doing X-ray crystallography and taking the "pictures" that shed the real light on the structure of DNA. It leaves enough time to write the papers, do the PR, and get the credit. And, I guess, there's more than enough time left over for "chasing popsies."http://webweekly.hms.harvard.edu/archive/2003/4_7/student_sc...
bootload|16 years ago
The 50th anniversary of the finding of the DNA structure meant a lot of new documentary information on the background to the race to find the structure of DNA. Firstly it shows the high degree of competitive rivalry between the players (Chargaff, Franklin, Pauling, Watson/Crick and Wilkins) to find the structure of DNA.
The key to finding the DNA structure was not just a fact of experimenting but assembling the pieces of the puzzle to create a workable theory. Each player had different pieces required in the puzzle
* Wilkins: who's earliest X-ray diffractions meant the dimensions could be calculated & who supplied Franklin with DNA samples.
* Franklin & Gosling: the X-ray diffraction pattern clearly showing the structure.
* Linus Pauling: Who's triple stranded DNA idea which turned out to be wrong but tipped off Watson & Cricks idea of a double helix.
* Watson: who knew the base pairing (AT & CG) fit all the dimensions
* Chargaff: who deduced the DNA ratios of A, T, G, C are equal
Then there was the technique. There is no doubt Franklin was the more analytic and systematic scientist compared to Watson and Crick who bumbled around like many of the others in the field building models. But Franklin had two things going against her. Firstly she working in a male dominated field. But more importantly she missed out on the benefit of teamwork. A lot this appears to stem from the personalities of Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. They simply didn't gel as a team as well as Watson & Crick. [0]
So the winners in this case could have been any of these players but it was Watson & Crick who happened to be at the right place and time understanding the smaller picture but more importantly having the imagination and freedom to think about how the pieces fit. Others supplied the information, they found the right theory to tie the information into a coherent idea. Watson and Crick didn't get the Nobel prize for just doing the basic science of discovering the structure of DNA. The pieces of the DNA puzzle lay in front of them. They get the recognition because they re-organised what information they had around them, come up with a theory that matched the data and wrote it up.
[0] Cold Spring Harbor Lab, DNAi, "Finding the Structure, Players", http://www.dnai.org/a/index.html
btilly|16 years ago