It is the spring of 1952. Rosalind Franklin is a scientist at King’s College London. Her student is Raymond Gosling. They have a small camera. It is not much bigger than a fist. They put a very thin thread of DNA in front of the camera. They send X-rays into the camera for many hours. One picture is very clear. But it has a problem. A part inside the camera moved. The picture is not in the middle.
This picture is Photograph 49. On the same day, Franklin starts a new picture. The new picture is Photograph 51. Today it is very famous.
For many years, people told one story. In this story, Franklin did not understand her own picture. Another scientist, James Watson, told this story. He saw one of Franklin’s pictures in 1953. A helix is a shape. It goes around and around, like a spring. Watson said the black cross in the picture showed a helix.
In 2026, two men wrote about Franklin. Their names are Alistair Sponsel and Brian Sutton. They read her notes. She wrote a lot about Photograph 49. They say she saw the helix in it. So she made a new and better picture. She made Photograph 51 for other people to see. The scientist Elspeth Garman said Franklin wanted her work to be perfect.
Franklin died in 1958. She was 37. In 1962, Watson and two other men, Crick and Wilkins, got the Nobel Prize. This is a very big prize.
Years later, Watson gave a talk. A woman put up her hand. She asked him about Rosalind Franklin’s work. Some people in the room clapped.