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[vvvvv]

If I were asked to give a lecture series on the topic of my choosing, it would be:

The Lovely Ladies of Science

OR...

Wow, They Really Got Screwed.The first person I would talk about is Rosalind Franklin. Of the people in the world who can tell you who discovered the strucutre of DNA, 90% will tell you it was James Watson and Frances Crik. It's

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[161803]

On Tuesday I was reading a book by Paul West called "Portable People" that had a short piece about Franklin. It said she had written that it was a helix in her lab notebook, and implied that it seemed obvious to her. A gist of the piece was that she was more interested in nature than in prestige, which, if true, would make her a model for the ideal scientist

[vvvvv]

It would be nice to think that one could simply "create" or examine nature without regard for recognition, but the world in which that could happen is not the world we live in. There are a lot of benefits attached to 'being known as the creator' that are nothing to scoff at: a nobel laureate can work on whatever Z(usually)he wants to for pretty much the rest of his life. He can go anywhere and work with anyone he wants, and he has very few worries about funding. An unknown? Not so much.

Further, a large contributing factor to the (still surprisingly) popular notion that "women are naturally ill equipped to do science/math" is the fact that women are not SEEN doing science and math, even when they are very very good at it. Rosalind Franklin by all rights should be alongside Marie Curie as Fucking Brilliant Women Scientists People Actually Know About. At least then there would have been two.

[161803]

Exactly

[vvvvv]

Also, the fact remains: she did the work. She looked at it in a way that no one else did, and she figured it out. It is not unreasonable to expect her to get some credit for that, Nobel or no. Getting some recognition for doing something incredible, not to mention something that ENDED UP KILLING YOU IN THE PROCESS is not the same thing as being fame-hungry or letting your desire for prestige eclispe your work.

Having your work recognized as good, worthwhile, or even revolutionary is a privilige doled out heavily (formerly: "almost exclusively") to men.

[sirreal13]

Ros was definitely ripped off. Both by dying (which not only made her ineligible to share in the Nobel Prize, but she couldn't defend herself).

Interpretation of the X-Ray Crystallography data was definitely made possible by elegant photos.

Just to muddy the waters, some of the images in question were done by Rosalind's post-doc, but they were stolen from her and her group.

I heard that Francis Crick's grandfather was a druggist and a buddy of Darwin becasue he collected moths (or something to that effect).

By the way, v, I friended you, based on our mutual interests in Twin Peaks and Swashbuckling.

[sirreal13]

Oh, hey!

Was that Wilkins? The postdoc, I mean.

I worked with Franklin's nephew for a bit last year--he had some Things to Say on the topic, if you can imagine.

Watson's The Double Helix is what REALLY kills me, although I believe that's what inadvertently led to the public acknowledgement of her contribution?

[vvvvv]

Meep! That was me (obviously).

[sirreal13]

That was the first time I heard of Rosalind Franklin. I'm just repeating something I heard on NPR. I don't think it was Maurice Wilkins, though... Post-docs and grad students routinely get passed over when credit is given...

Vita subsided pulchritude and losing his which leads deserved admonishment ights.

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