co-conspirator Wilkins stating that Franklin was leaving King’s
College so that they could now put “all hands to the pump.”
This was also one day after two of Franklin’s papers had reached
Acta Crystallographica for publication.
Crick and Watson then published their model in Nature
on April 25, 1953 in an article describing the double-helical
structure of DNA, with only a footnote acknowledging “
having been stimulated by a general knowledge of” Franklin and
Wilkin’s ‘unpublished’ contribution. Actually, although it was
the bare minimum, they had just enough specific knowledge
of Franklin’s data upon which to base their model. As a result
of a deal struck by the two laboratory directors, articles by
Wilkins and Franklin, which included their X-ray diffraction
data, were modified and then published second and third in
the same issue of Nature, seemingly only in support of the
Crick and Watson discovery.
Eventually, Francis Crick would admit that her data were
“the data we actually used” to formulate their 1953 hypothe-
sis regarding the structure of DNA. Unpublished drafts of her
papers clearly showed that she had independently determined
the overall form of the DNA helix (phosphate groups on the
outside of the structure, as opposed to the original models of
Watson and Crick as well as those of Pauling with the phos-
phates backasswards on the inside).
www.coatingsworld.com
Coatings World | 27
