AT WHAT POINT DO YOU KNOW YOU REALLY UNDERSTAND SOMETHING?

Rosalind Franklin's research was crucial to the discovery of the helical structure of DNA.

Modern science is a social endeavor. It is clear that Rosalind Franklin's failure to discover the structure of DNA before Watson and Crick was a direct result of her social isolation. Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA was a borrowed victory that rested heavily on Franklin's discoveries. Their real contribution to biology was their early recognition that DNA's helical structure explains how it works. What was not known by anyone at the time that Franklin set to work was that a molecule of DNA resembles a ladder twisted around its long axis. Franklin died in 1958 of caner, only 37 years old, without ever being recognized for her crucial contribution to science.