Letters to the Editor: Rosalind Franklin made James Watson’s Nobel

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To the editor : James Watson’s 1962 Nobel Prize, awarded jointly with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, is among the best-known Nobel honors ( “James Watson, Nobel Prize winner and DNA pioneer, dies,” Nov. 7). It should be noted, however, that it was British chemist Rosalind Franklin who, in May 1952 , made Watson’s achievement possible by showing in her famous Photograph 51 that DNA was a double helix, not a triple helix favored by Caltech’s Linus Pauling . Sadly, Franklin could not win a Nobel Prize because she died of ovarian cancer in 1958, at age 37, and the prize isn’t awarded posthumously .

The outspoken and controversial Watson had described Franklin unflat