1. Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins
Chase Greenberg and Taewon Kim

2. Rosalind Franklin

3. Background Born July 25, 1920 in London
Attended Newham College, Cambridge
She was taught X-ray Crystallography and X-ray diffraction from Jacques Mering
She worked at Kings College in London

4. Maurice Wilkins

5. Background Born in Pongaroa, New Zealand in 1916
1938: Graduated St. John’s College in Cambridge with a degree in Physics
Started work with John Randall at University of St. Andrews in Scotland
Both moved to Kings College where Randall soon hired Franklin

6. Experiment
Prepared crystallographs from uniformly oriented DNA fibers. The images suggested a spiral model
X-ray crystallography: When a purified substance can be made to form crystals; the pattern of diffraction passed though the crystallized substance shows position of atoms
Shows 3-D pattern
Franklin created Photo 51 using DNA diffraction. This method does not require crystallization. DNA doesn’t like to form a crystal, rather organized fibers

8. DNA Crystallography

9. Photo 51

10. Contributions
It was Rosalind Franklin’s “Photo 51” that allowed Watson and Crick realize DNA has a double helix structure
and-crick-s-mistakes-raymond-gosling.html
Photo 51 was shown to Watson and Crick by her colleague Maurice Wilkins without her knowledge
In 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the shape of DNA
Franklin was not recognized for her work until after her death

11. Sources
of-x-ray-pattern-.html
project