Comment by slibhb
15 hours ago
> But really, how much does it matter? It seems like the four of them each contributed a lot. The Nobel prize only went to the other three, in large part because Franklin died before it was given out.
A Nobel can only be split among 3. Agree with the rest of your post.
It also is not awarded posthumously. She was out of contention, which made it a lot easier to decide which three of the four to honor.
After 1974 is when they decided to not award it posthumously. In 1962 that rule was still in the future.
Helical proteins are quite ubiquitous in biology, that part of the discovery seems inconsequential.
Seems to me that #3 is the whole story. That was the key insight, the thing that was never known before. The secret to how life replicates.
Other comments suggest that Franklin would have eventually gotten there on her own. Her work was key to the discovery as we know it, which wouldn't have happened without it. To me, that's the whole story.
Specifically the antiparallel base matching was the important bit, agreed, but minor nitpick. The first alpha helix wasn't solved until 1951, so one year earlier. Their ubiquity was very novel.