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4.12 process information from secondary sources to describe and analyse the relative importance of the work of:

process information from secondary sources to describe and analyse the relative importance of the work of:

  • James Watson
  • Francis Crick
  • Rosalind Franklin
  • Maurice Wilkins

in determining the structure of DNA and the impact of the quality of collaboration and communication on their scientific research

Sample description

Scientific discoveries are rarely the work of one person but tend to result from teams of people bringing together different skills. These teams may be working together or may be scattered all over the world working independently in different laboratories. Determining the structure of DNA is a good case study exemplifying the role of collaboration and effective communication in scientific research.

The four people in this story worked at two different places. Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins were from King’s College London and James Watson and Francis Crick were from Cambridge University. Rosalind Franklin was a woman working in a field that was male dominated. You will see as the story progresses that she didn’t get equal recognition for her contributions. Her work on X-ray diffraction showed that DNA had the characteristics of a helix. She wished to gather more evidence of this result but Maurice Wilkins showed her results to Watson and Crick without her permission or knowledge.

This information was enough to encourage Watson and Crick to develop their model of the double helix for the structure of DNA.

Rosalind Franklin died of cancer in 1958 at the age of 37.  Watson, Crick and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize for their work in 1962.