Nova – The Secret of Photo 51

1. When Rosalind Franklin was a child – what did she “spend her time” doing?

2. What university did Franklin attend?

3. What can scientists analyze through the use of x-ray crystallography?

4. How did Franklin help the people of England during WWII?

5. What danger was Franklin exposed to in her lab in Paris?

6. How old was Franklin when she began her research on DNA?

7. What year did she start her DNA research at King’s college?

8. Who is Maurice Wilkins?

9. Who turned out to better trained – Wilkins or Franklin?

10. Did Franklin and Wilkins get along easily?

11. What did Franklin discover that was crucial to discovering the structure of DNA?

12. What shape x-ray shows that DNA is helical?

13. Is Watson and Crick’s first model accurate?

14. How do Watson and Crick keep getting Franklin’s unpublished data?

15. How long did it take to do the calculations for one image?

16. What structure did Linus Pauling suggest for DNA?

17. How does Watson see photo 51?

18. What does the photo tell Watson about the helix?

19. What discovery does Schargraff made about the quantity of the DNA bases (A,C,T,G)?

20. Besides the structure of DNA – what else does Watson & Crick’s model show?

21. How do Watson & Crick prove that their model is accurate?

22. In the Nature article – Do Watson & Crick properly credit Franklin for her contribution to their discovery?

23. What work is Franklin most proud of?

24. Why did Franklin die?

25. Was she ever aware of her true contribution to the discovery of DNA?

26. Why did Harvard withdraw its bid to publish Watson’s “The Double Helix”?

27. Who finally honors Franklin in a Nobel awards presentation?

28. What was Franklin’s goal in life?