October 6, 2008 | 27 comments

No Nobel for You: Top 10 Nobel Snubs

As the 2008 laureates are announced, SciAm looks back at some of Nobel history's also-rans

By Erica Westly

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5.) Rosalind Franklin--her work on the structure of DNA never received a Nobel No Nobel for You: Top 10 Nobel Snubs :: As the 2008 laureates are announced, SciAm looks

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5.) Rosalind Franklin--her work on the structure of DNA never received a NobelAlthough James Watson and Francis Crick's theoretical work sped up the process, many, including Crick, felt Franklin, with her X-ray photographs of DNA crystals, would have eventually solved the puzzle on her own. The Nobel committee may never have had the chance to omit her, though. Franklin died in 1958, four years before Watson, Crick and Franklin's colleague, Maurice Wilkins, shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

In his book, The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy and Prestige, Burton Feldman suggests that, had she been alive, Franklin almost assuredly would have received the prize over Wilkins, whose contribution was deemed nominal by most in the field. In a 2003 interview with Scientific American, Watson suggested she and Wilkins might have shared a separate prize for chemistry, thereby allowing all four of them to receive the award.

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