Seventy years ago, two male scientists, Francis Crick and James Watson, proclaimed they had discovered the secret of life: the structure of DNA. Since then, history has acknowledged how Rosalind Franklin was sidelined. But new archive evidence has cast doubt on the widely accepted narrative – that Franklin collected an all-important image but didn’t appreciate the meaning of what she was looking at.
This knowledge of DNA allowed for a deeper understanding of how DNA stores information and how it is replicated. It led to technologies such as DNA fingerprinting, gene sequencing, gene editing and personalised medicines.
