Archives from the pioneers of modern genetics to be brought together for the first time

More details have been announced today of the Wellcome Library's groundbreaking digitisation project, 'Modern Genetics and its Foundations'.

Tens of thousands of notes, letters, sketches, lectures, photographs and essays, produced by the key players in the discovery of the structure of DNA and the development of genetics - including Francis Crick, James D Watson, Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins - will be made freely available online.

These vast collections contain iconic documents, everyday exchanges, complex research notes and personal ephemera and highlight the extraordinary networks of insight and inspiration behind pivotal moments of scientific discovery. The material will be released in phases from autumn 2012.

Working in partnership with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA, The Churchill Archives Centre, the University of Glasgow, King's College London and UCL (University College London), the archival papers of James D Watson, Rosalind Franklin, Sydney Brenner, Lionel Penrose, J B S Haldane, Guido Pontecorvo, James Harrison Renwick, Malcolm Ferguson-Smith and Maurice Wilkins will be digitised. They will join material from the Wellcome Library's own holdings, including the papers of Francis Crick, Fred Sanger, Arthur Ernest Mourant, the MRC blood group, Hans Gruenberg and Gerard Wyatt.

The material will offer a comprehensive picture of the complex relationships between the scientists unlocking the secrets of the structure of DNA, in their own words, and give researchers and curious minds access to the personal and professional thoughts, blind alleys and breakthroughs of the circle of brilliant minds whose ideas transformed our understanding of the matter of life.

To tie in with this news, Radio 4's Today programme broadcast yesterday a feature exploring the project. The feature - presented by BBC Health Correspondent Fergus Walsh - is available to listen to online (scroll down to 0846).  Walsh has also written about the project on his BBC blog, asking the question ‘The most important photo ever taken?  The Today programme’s website also displays some of the images from the papers of Francis Crcick held in the Wellcome LIbrary that will be made available online as part of the project.

Image: Sketch of the DNA double helix by Francis Crick (PP/CRI/H/1/16).

The Dark Lady of DNA

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born 90 years ago today, on July 25 1920. Franklin was a biophysicist who produced the now famous x-ray of a DNA molecule known as Photo 51 when she worked at King’s College, London in 1951. The photo formed critical evidence that led to the confirmation of the postulated double helical structure of DNA. The image shown above is from the same series of x-rays and is held by Wellcome Images.

Franklin was rewarded little for her contribution towards the discovery of DNA's structure. Co-discoverers Francis Crick and James Watson from Cambridge University were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on nucleic acids (including DNA) alongside Franklin's colleague Maurice Wilkins. Franklin could not have been awarded in conjunction as she had died four years before, and Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously. But some feel that Crick and Francis did not sufficiently acknowledge Franklin for producing her crucial evidence*, and many have observed a bitter rivalry between the three.

The Wellcome Library is currently digitising Crick’s personal papers as part of the Modern Genetics and its Foundations project. Although they later became friends, his letters reveal a strong competitive spirit between himself and Franklin, and a patronising view of "the dark lady of DNA", between 1951 and 1953. In a letter to the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, Crick says,

"Rosalind was a little difficult to get on with on occasions. She was usually charming but could be a bit spikey" (PP/CRI/D/1/3/1).

Franklin’s biographer, Lynne Elkin, wrote an article entitled 'Rosalind Franklin and the Double-Helix' that was published in March 2003 by Physics Today. She approached Crick for editorial advice. Their correspondence contains snippets of Crick’s dismissive attitude towards Franklin’s contribution: "Rosalind’s grasp of the idea of anti-parallel chains was very fleeting".

He goes on to suggest that he and Watson had already arrived at their conclusion regarding the structure of DNA before they saw Photo 51: "the only detail we learned from the B-photo was that the B form was clearly helical which we had been saying all along". In response, Elkin replies in an email to Crick’s assistant:

"I think that their treatment of REF has been like a sword hanging over their heads for 50 years with Jim being too insensitive to care, but Crick being more human … I have gotten a lot of response by people who very undiplomatically call them thieves and worse."

Further to the letters, the Library has more material on Franklin and the discovery of DNA. Wellcome Film holds a recording of the 1987 television film, The Race for the Double Helix. This dramatisation features Jeff Goldblum as Watson and Juliet Stevenson as Franklin. Wellcome Images’ historical collection includes this "funeral card" produced by Franklin and colleague Raymond Gosling, sent to Maurice Wilkins. It is a satirical observation on the unlikelihood of the A-DNA model. An explanation of their joke is here.

As the digitisation project proceeds, we hope more gems like this will be uncovered in the Library’s collections.

*Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that Crick and Watson published Photo 51 in the 1953 Nature paper without crediting Franklin. This is incorrect. A similar x-ray diffraction photograph is printed alongside their paper, but belongs to another paper by Wilkins, who does mention Franklin. The photograph in Wilkins' paper was taken by himself. We apologise for this oversight". (Correction made: 25th August 2010).


Authors: Julia Nurse and Louise Crane