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.
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 fiddling about with cardboard shapes corresponding to the component molecules of DNA, using the basic rules of chemistry. Once they had finally, almost by accident, made the discovery, then they could see that it corresponded to Franklin’s data.
Franklin was not hostile to the pair—she continued to share her data and ideas with both men and subsequently became very close friends with Crick and his wife, Odile. She regularly stayed at their Cambridge home, went to their notorious parties and went to the theatre with Odile. Later, after her cancer diagnosis, she convalesced with the Cricks, twice. There are some charming letters from Odile that I quote in the book, describing their friendship.
In 1947, Crick set out his twin ambitions—to understand the nature of life, and of the human brain. With his work on molecular biology, he made huge strides toward achieving that first ambition; in 1977 Crick settled in California, working at the Salk Institute, with the aim of understanding consciousness. Although he made no single decisive breakthrough—we still do not understand how consciousness works—he played a decisive role in creating modern neuroscience.
First, he used his reputation and influence to argue for a focus on precise anatomy—the origin of today’s huge projects to map animal brains and, eventually, the human brain.
If the image had been so decisive, surely Franklin would have realized this herself.
Then, in the 1980s he was closely involved with the cognitive scientists and computer scientists who developed something called Parallel Distributed Processing—the distant precursor of today’s AI systems. He argued for fusing computer models of behaviour with precise anatomical knowledge to gain insight into how nervous systems work, and collaborated closely with AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield, who in 2024 shared the Nobel Prize for their work.
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