This article explores why Rosalind Franklin’s crucial contribution to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA was never awarded a Nobel Prize, shedding light on the discrimination and prejudice faced by women scientists and examining the difficult realities of being a woman in science.
Ten years after the completion of the Human Genome Project, anyone with even a passing interest in biology can tell you that DNA is a double helix and outline how DNA replication works. However, the seemingly simple structure of DNA and the principles of replication were not understood until three billion years after life appeared on Earth. This doesn’t mean that the first life forms had to have been intelligent, but it does mean that it wasn’t easy to come up with the first principles. Knowing the structure of DNA is crucial to understanding the phenomenon of heredity, and it was James Watson and Francis Crick who won the Nobel Prize for figuring it out.
In fact, three people were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962, including Maurice Wilkins, but Watson became most famous for writing a book about the process of discovering the structure of DNA. The Double Helix is what made him shine. However, The Double Helix also revealed Watson’s unscrupulous behavior, which got him into trouble after its publication. The most decisive clue to the structure of DNA was a single diffraction photo of a DNA crystal. However, none of the three Nobel Prize winners is the owner of the photo. The photograph was taken by Rosemary Franklin, a female scientist working under Wilkins, and Wilkins showed it to Watson without her permission. If this hadn’t happened, biology textbooks today might still feature her name instead of Watson and Crick.
Regardless of the process, it was Watson and Crick who eventually discovered the double helix. Wilkins won the Nobel Prize with them, but only because he had been studying the structure of DNA for much longer than Watson and Crick. This is why people don’t remember Wilkins. However, Rosalind, who provided the crucial clue, did not receive a Nobel Prize. Sadly, she died of ovarian cancer in 1958, four years before Watson and Crick won the Nobel Prize. So, if she hadn’t gotten ovarian cancer, would she have gotten the Nobel Prize?
Given that Wilkins was a co-winner, you’d think she would have won, but the answer isn’t that simple. Looking at Nobel Prize statistics, it’s easy to see that it’s extremely rare for a woman to win a Nobel Prize. As of 2008, only 12 women had won the Nobel Prize in Science, and Dorothy Hodgkin was the only British woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize at its centennial celebration in 2001. Why are women such a small percentage of Nobel Prize winners?
Most people might think that the main reason is that there are too few female scientists compared to male scientists. This is due to biological differences between men and women, with significant differences in the structure of the female and male brain. In particular, women’s brains have a much more densely developed corpus callosum connecting the left and right hemispheres than men’s, which makes them better at tasks that use both the left and right brains. The left brain governs reason and the right brain governs intuition, and women are better than men at expressing emotions and using language that uses both. On the other hand, men are better at tasks that use only one side of the brain, like math and spatial perception.
But these are just averages, and there are always exceptions. The development of human brain structure is strongly influenced by the concentration of the hormone testosterone in the mother’s body, which can lead to the birth of a boy who is more expressive and verbal, or a girl who excels in math and science and loves spatial puzzles. However, these are the exceptions rather than the rule, which is why the number of male scientists is so much higher than the number of female scientists. But even if the number of female scientists were small, it’s questionable that there have only been about 10 female laureates in over 100 years. There are more than 530 male Nobel Prize winners.
The biggest problem is that there is still bias and discrimination against women in the scientific community. A prime example is Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the Cambridge astronomer who discovered the first pulsar. She was denied the Nobel Prize simply because she was a woman. It was her advisor, Anthony Hewish, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the pulsar, and he was awarded the prize “for recognizing the significance of the observations of the tides”. Lise Meitner, the female physicist who discovered and demonstrated the fission of uranium, also faced restrictions that led to her Nobel Prize being awarded to another scientist she worked with. It’s easy to see that there was a lot of prejudice and discrimination against women.
Let’s go back to the story of Rosalind Franklin. It’s no exaggeration to say that she discovered the double helix structure of DNA, and her achievements were truly remarkable. But she came at a time when she was not allowed to eat in the faculty cafeteria at King’s College because she was a woman. Based on the story of Bell, who discovered the pulsar but lost the Nobel Prize to his advisor, it seems highly unlikely that Rosalind would have received it.
Some people might wonder why we’re arguing about something that happened so long ago. The situation is very different today. However, it seems that the scientific community is still not friendly to women scientists. In 2009, there were three women among the Nobel Prize winners in science. After more than 100 years and only 12 female winners, this is a huge milestone in the male-dominated world of science. It seems like a lot of the bias against women has been alleviated. However, Dr. Ada Yonat, the Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, said in her acceptance speech that she never thought of herself as a woman, either as a person or as a scientist. While this can be interpreted in many ways, I suspect she was referring to the gender discrimination that is still prevalent in academia.
As such, support for women scientists is still very much lacking. Rosalind Franklin’s dramatic life and work is all the more valuable because it took place in such a context, and it presents challenges for the scientific community to address in the future. The burden of childbirth and childcare is also a major obstacle for women in research. In this regard, I think women need both governmental consideration and personal will. I don’t think this is limited to the scientific community or the Nobel Prize. The conditions for women in many fields and in everyday life are still very poor. I hope that women scientists who want to devote themselves to research will be able to do so in a comfortable environment, and that there will be no more unfortunate women scientists whose achievements will be taken away from them.
