Franklin’s near-discovery

1:13:00>> But but she didn't come up with the structure technically. >> Yeah. Technically, she did not come up with a structure. She was incredibly close. If you look at the laboratory notes, she has notes in her labs about how this has to be two strands. They're antiparallel. All from her data because she took the data. >> Maurice didn't leak. If Maurice didn't leak, >> she could have had a little bit more time. >> She would have had time. And who knows? Who knows? But it, you know, >> she was she had the source. >> She had she was there. >> She was really the source. >> And if you look at her notes, she didn't have the pairing, which was crucial. >> That's that's D. Yeah. Yeah. and she didn't she didn't have that guy who was like no it's not that form it's this other form right and one of the other

1:13:42great things about Watson Crick's paper is um they say that it doesn't escape us that the replication mechanism is now obvious >> because you've got a double helix you unzip now there's a C here you attach a G if there's a T you attach an A right because of the hydrogen bonding which is unique a two goes with a two a three goes with a three and the length constrains the the the spacing of the ladder constrains that an A will not go with an A. Even though an A and an A have a two um two hydrogen bonds, it's going to be too wide for the ladder. >> That's a good point, right? So, it's obvious now given the structure how you

1:14:23would replicate this information, which was a huge deal like how how can you have a a molecule that does both that stores and also is able to replicate really quickly. >> Right. Right. >> Right. Um, it's an incredible story. So, now there's a shift in research. Franklin, as I was saying, she moves to Burkeback College and she focuses on the tobacco mosaic virus. She does incredible work on the tobacco mosaic virus with a colleague named Aaron Kug. Unfortunately, given that she was working with X-rays, it's um it's thought that the X-ray research actually contributed to ovarian cancer that she developed later on in life. Not that much later. She died actually in 1958 at

1:15:04the age of 37. This is a photo of her when she was visiting California um in Yusede and she had visited Berkeley to give some talks and UCLA to give some talks. Um it's really unfortunate that that she died so young at the age of 37. >> Yeah, that's and and was was incandescently bright. >> Yes. Incredibly bright. Incredibly bright. Um and she figured out the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus. her colleague Aaron Kug who was her subordinate at the time went on to win the Nobel Prize for the tobacco mosaic virus. So very very likely that had had she lived she would have won the Nobel Prize for that as well. Um 1958 is when

1:15:45she dies. Four years later the Nobel Prize is awarded to James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins. Um, obviously you can't give Nobel prizes and actually John Steinbeck won the the literature prize there. So he's he's in the in the group photo as well. Um,