AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -On 6 May 1952, at King´s College London in London, England, Rosalind Franklin photographed her fifty-first X-ray diffraction pattern of deoxyribosenucleic acid, or DNA.

Detailed explanation-2: -This is the iconic X-ray diffraction photograph of DNA taken by physical chemist Rosalind Elsie Franklin and PhD student Raymond G. Gosling. The genetic material glimpsed in Photo 51 connects all living things and the image thus metaphorically captures human past, present, and future.

Detailed explanation-3: -Gosling, working under Franklin’s supervision, actually took the famous Photograph 51, whose X-shaped image would lead James Watson and Francis Crick to conceptualize DNA’s structure as a double helix, the breakthrough that would lead to today’s genetic treatments. But Franklin didn’t show Photograph 51 to Watson.

Detailed explanation-4: -Working with graduate student Raymond Gosling, Franklin took numerous x-ray diffraction photos of DNA fibers using a fine-focus X-ray tube and micro camera that she refined. One of the duo’s first discoveries was how DNA had two forms which both produced different pictures.

Detailed explanation-5: -Photograph 51 tells the dramatic tale of the race to the double helix in the years between 1951 and 1953, when Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins were using X-ray diffraction to take images of DNA.