Photograph 51

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_51

 

This image played a critical role in fundamentally changing history, in changing the world, by making visible the previously unseen. 

Alone, it appears a mystery, whether boring or beautiful, it is a meaningless abstract of black and white, a Rorschach test with no answers, just something to stare into and wonder. Or at least that is what it was to me, when I first saw it. Its official title is no help, labeled only “Photograph 51,” a title I am sure we would all critique after this class if we saw it alone in a catalog. The story of Photograph 51 is highly contested, however, and has altered over time, and for me that is what is interesting about this image and what it represents. Just seeing it, we might not ever stop to consider it, and it certainly does not grab the heart or your empathy and transport you to a time or place or feeling. It does not look like an image of change, an image reflecting either humanity or the world. But with context, it reveals both of these things, and it is transformed from an abstraction of black and white in an “X” pattern into something much more. With context, its “X” means “helix,” and Photo 51 represents the “eureka” moment in the quest to discover the structure of DNA.

Photo 51 is an x-ray photograph, used in x-ray crystallography to determine the 3-D atomic and molecular structure of a crystal. Developed from 1912-1914, the first atomic-resolution structure to be “solved” was that of table salt, and by 1923 crystallographers were examining organic matter (X-ray crystallography, 2013). For organic matter, crystallographers remove their specimen (a protein, a virus, DNA) from a cell, convert it into crystal form, and shine x-rays into it, as it is backed by a photographic negative. The x-rays are diffracted by the atoms in the crystal, which in effect cast their shadows onto the negatives. These images are then read by trained crystallographers, revealing the 3-D positions and sizes in a molecular structure (Rapoport, 2002, p. 117).

Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/DNA-photograph.html

 

Photo 51 was taken of DNA by Rosalind Franklin in May 1952, and was by far the best photograph of its kind, due to Franklin’s skill as a scientist in isolating and creating her DNA samples, and as a photographer in her lab, where she and her assistant had to design their camera and make many of its parts by hand (Gibbons, 2012, p. 65). In terms of her samples, Franklin is credited with distinguishing between a dry A form of DNA, and a wet B form, of which she alone was isolating and imaging at the time. Photograph 51 was the best image taken of the B form, with its clear X revealing a helical structure. In addition, Franklin had correctly interpreted her images to not only report that DNA was helical, but also that it was likely a double helix with anti-parallel strands, had an outside backbone of phosphates, and was within a certain size (Photo 51, 2013).

(An amazing resource for understanding the science of this photograph is NOVA’s interactive “Anatomy of Photo 51” at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/DNA-photograph.html.)

This image was shown to James Watson by Maurice Wilkins, without Franklin’s knowledge or permission, and was critical information in helping Watson and Francis Crick complete their chemical model of DNA. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins would later win the Nobel Prize for this discovery (Franklin had died, and the award is not given posthumously or to groups larger than 3). It is debated, however, if Franklin would have been given the award had she been alive, as especially Watson refused to ever officially acknowledge her role in the discovery or credit her photographs, (his treatment of Franklin in his famous book, The Double Helix, is notoriously misogynistic and harsh,) despite also recognizing that Photo 51 caused his mouth to fall open, his pulse to race, and that it set him and Crick down a new path in their work (Gibbons, 2012, pp. 66-67). Watson and Crick have long been famously associated with this “discovery that was undoubtedly one of the most important scientific achievements of the twentieth century,” but Franklin and her critical photograph are only recently getting a role in that history’s story. 

For me that is part of what makes this image interesting, all of its roles throughout time to different people. To Franklin it was one image in a series of calculated data collection steps, from which she personally preferred to not leap forward into hypothesis. For Watson it was a eureka moment that allowed him to take just such a leap, a playful one while modeling that led to his and Crick’s knowledge being labeled “discovery,” while Franklin’s photo was mere “evidence.” For Wilkins, perhaps it was also only evidence, not proper scientific property of Franklin’s. For some it is a plagiarized image, and for others it is an image of the gender imbalance in the sciences, of power discrepancies that exist still to this day. For science teachers Photo 51 is a story to sell physics (Braun, Tierney, & Schmitzer, 2011) and for creative history teachers it and its story are a rich foundation for lessons in thinking about all of these questions and re-writing (or re-imaging) them into today (Jensen, 2011). Photo 51 has been the subject of a television show, and even titles a recent play about Franklin. 

And, perhaps, this image is beautiful. To many scientists the structure of DNA is considered beautiful, and Franklin’s photographs have been called “among the most beautiful of any substances ever taken” (Elkin, 2003, p. 42). Personally, I do not find Photo 51 beautiful, hypnotic, maybe even eerie, but not beautiful. But does it become beautiful if you have the training to know instantly its hidden messages, to see in its splotches and structure a floating twisting ladder of life? Can an image be beautiful not alone, but because of what its shadows may reveal? 

I obviously do not have the answers to those questions, and something certainly does not have to be beautiful to enact change or be important, but I think contemplating Photo 51’s various meanings and possibilities is an interesting exercise, and one that has been taken on by many. Perhaps that is the true power of photographs of change, that they continue to captivate and tell stories, lending themselves to dialogue and interpretation, holding multiplicity frozen in an image, reflecting back always contested and transforming meanings. As an abstract image Photo 51 belongs to science, along with its unquestionable importance in our knowledge of biology. But it is also clearly much more, layered with such contested human and social contexts, and for me this is why it is current and interesting, and belongs not only in biology textbooks, but in our general cultural visual knowledge bank. 

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REFERENCES:

Braun, G., Tierney, D., & Schmitzer, H. (2011). How Rosalind Franklin Discovered the Helical Structure of DNA: Experiments in Diffraction. Physics Teacher, 49(3), 140-143.

Elkin, L. (2003). Rosalind Franklin and the Double Helix. Physics Today, 56(3), 42.

Gibbons, M. G. (2012). Reassessing Discovery: Rosalind Franklin, Scientific Visualization, and the Structure of DNA. Philosophy Of Science, 79(1), 63-80.

Jensen, M. (2011). What if Rosalind Franklin Were There - Having Fun with Watson & Crick's Famous Picture in a Freshman Genetics Seminar.

Photo 51. (2013). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_51

Rapoport, S. (2002). Rosalind Franklin: Unsung Hero of the DNA Revolution. History Teacher, 36(1), 116.

X-ray crystallography. (2013). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_diffraction