On 28 February 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick announced that they had discovered the double-helical structure of DNA. This discovery wasn't announced at a scientific conference, but in pub in Cambridge, at lunchtime.
Writing for the Spectator, Matt Ridley, discusses the contentious issue of who really discovered DNA’s structure?
A rival team at King's College, London, including Rosalind Franklin who worked in X-ray crystallography taking images of DNA molecules, had photographed an x-ray crystallograph of the structure of DNA, which Watson had seen. He interpreted the photograph and understood that for the base pairing to work, the two strands of phosphates and sugars must run in opposite directions, one up, one down.
'It is often said that Rosalind Franklin took that photograph, that it was all but stolen from her by Watson and Crick, who never acknowledged their debt to her. It is not so simple.' said Ridley.
Read more in his article here.
