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From: werner@aecom.YU.EDU (Craig Werner)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.med,sci.misc,sci.research
Subject: Re: RACE FOR THE DOUBLE HELIX
Message-ID: <1329@aecom.YU.EDU>
Date: Tue, 22-Sep-87 12:16:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: aecom.1329
Posted: Tue Sep 22 12:16:28 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Sep-87 06:58:20 EDT
References: <3072@mtgzz.UUCP>
Organization: Albert Einstein Coll. of Med., NY
Lines: 31
Xref: mnetor sci.bio:655 sci.med:3270 sci.misc:483 sci.research:225

In article <3072@mtgzz.UUCP>, leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (Mark R. Leeper) writes:
In: > 		       A film review by Mark R. Leeper
>                                                                  It is the
> story of how three men won a Nobel Prize based greatly on the work of one
> woman who neither got a piece of the prize nor, because she was a woman, was

	The preceding was lifted somewhat out of context, but there is one
thing to be said about this.  The real reason Rosalind Franklin did not
win a Nobel Prize is because she died shortly afterwards, and the prize
cannot be awarded posthumously.
	It is, of course, for those arm-chair historians to debate that if
she had lived, whether the prize would have gone to Watson, Crick, and
Wilkins, or Watson, Crick, and Franklin (the prize can also only be
awarded to 3 people).
	Personally,  I think it would have gone to Wilkins, who worked on
the structure of DNA both before and afterwards.  Franklin, in the
interim, had abandoned DNA and moved on to TMV (Tobacco Mosaic Virus)
with a student collaborator, Aaron Klug.   Klug later won the Nobel
prize for elucidating the structure of TMV, albeit after about 15
years work.  Again, had she lived, she would have been a prime candidate 
for sharing in this Nobel prize.

	BTW, I unfortunately don't get cable, so I didn't see the movie,
but I do remember Jim Watson's description of his reaction,  "I am about
to lose my identity completely,"  explaining that for the rest of his
life, people will expect him to look like Jeff Goldblum.
-- 
	        Craig Werner   (future MD/PhD, 3 years down, 4 to go)
	     werner@aecom.YU.EDU -- Albert Einstein College of Medicine
              (1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517)
"If you think you might faint, don't worry; you can always go into psychiatry."