Crick and Watson Did Not Steal Franklin's Data

Summary

Working in Cambridge, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix in early 1953, while Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, researchers at King’s College London, were also trying to crack the structure. Franklin was about to leave King’s and DNA work all together, while Wilkins was preparing to focus his mind more closely on the problem once Franklin left. It’s widely believed that Watson and Crick stole Franklin’s data and that this enabled them to make their breakthrough.The idea can be traced back to Watson’s page-turning but unreliable memoir, The Double Helix, in which he describes seeing X-ray diffraction images at King’s in January 1953 and feeling excited about them. He does not say who made those images (although he does say that Wilkins had been repeating some of Franklin’s observations), but most people believe that this was one of Franklin’s images despite a lack of reliable evidence for this. Even if the image had been so decisive, surely Franklin—an expert—would have realized this herself. ADVERTISEMENT Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . With Nathaniel Comfort (who is writing a biography of Watson), I discovered that in January 1953, Franklin suggested Crick talk to a colleague, who had an informal report of the work she and Wilkins were doing at King’s, if he wanted to learn more about her findings. There is no indication that she was concerned about sharing her results.CLOSE READING: Matthew Cobb says that the now widespread assumption that Francis Crick and James Watson stole Rosalind Franklin’s data to make their momentous discovery about the double-helix structure of DNA is based on non-existent evidence and isn’t borne out by the rest of the facts. Photo by Chris Schmauch.Interviews with Crick from the 1960s and a close reading of the Watson and Crick research papers show that the actual process of making the breakthrough did not involve using any of Franklin’s data. Instead, the pair spent a month...