Rosalind Franklin was the real discoverer of the
double helix DNA structure. Unfortunately due to her nature as a woman, she was
looked down upon the scientific community and credits went to James Watson and Francis
Crick. Their work was actually based off of hers. The office politics had
hidden her talents away and ignored an award she deserved. Unfortunately,
the Nobel Peace prize is only giving to those who are living. There should be
exceptions. In the comic strip from the coursepack, Rosalind was portrayed as a
very intellectual woman who did not have time for petty drama
or irrelevant cases. There was a frame where, Watson and Crick had
thought they discovered how the DNA structure would look like and made a model,
while in face they actually heard it at one of her conferences. However even
when they tried to reconstruct the idea, it was still wrong. Rosalind yells at
them saying they have to quit with wasting her time and they should stop
messing around.
Even after several decades,
many people still believe Rosalind should’ve been credited with eh discovery.
In one of the documentaries shown in class, it shows a lab report where Watson and
Crick had added their names to her report by hand. Lab associates knew she was
the brighter one but was not credited for her work. Most of the time, she was
looked down upon because she was one of the first women scientists to make such
a breakthrough. In the beginning of the comic strip from the reading, the
scientists at the lab were surprised their new associate was a woman and that
she even understood anything they were saying. But she eventually proved them
wrong and even though Watson and Crick stole her work, she acted honorably
shaking their hands to congratulate them on the award they got for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment