'Lost' Letters Reveal Twists in Discovery of Double Helix
Rediscovered letters and postcards highlight the fierce competition among scientists who discovered DNA's famous double-helix structure and unraveled the genetic code.
Francis Crick and James D. Watson shared a 1962 Nobel Prize with Maurice Wilkins for their work on revealing the structure of the DNA molecule that encodes instructions for the development and function of living beings. But formerly lost letters kept by Crick add more color to the well-known rivalries between Wilkins and the Crick-Watson duo.
"The [letters] give us much more flavor and examples illuminating the characters and the relations between them," said study researcher Alexander Gann, editorial director at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press in New York. "They're consistent with what we already believed, but they add important details."
A fourth researcher credited with initial DNA work, Rosalind Franklin, died of cancer in 1958 and was never nominated for a Nobel Prize. She and her male colleagues did not get along despite their professional collaboration, as seen in some rather blunt messages contained within the new material.
"I hope the smoke of witchcraft will soon be getting out of our eyes," Wilkins wrote to Crick and Watson in 1953, as Franklin prepared to leave Wilkins' lab for Birbeck College in London....
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Francis Crick and James D. Watson shared a 1962 Nobel Prize with Maurice Wilkins for their work on revealing the structure of the DNA molecule that encodes instructions for the development and function of living beings. But formerly lost letters kept by Crick add more color to the well-known rivalries between Wilkins and the Crick-Watson duo.
"The [letters] give us much more flavor and examples illuminating the characters and the relations between them," said study researcher Alexander Gann, editorial director at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press in New York. "They're consistent with what we already believed, but they add important details."
A fourth researcher credited with initial DNA work, Rosalind Franklin, died of cancer in 1958 and was never nominated for a Nobel Prize. She and her male colleagues did not get along despite their professional collaboration, as seen in some rather blunt messages contained within the new material.
"I hope the smoke of witchcraft will soon be getting out of our eyes," Wilkins wrote to Crick and Watson in 1953, as Franklin prepared to leave Wilkins' lab for Birbeck College in London....