Google’s doodle for today honors Rosalind Franklin, the Cambridge-trained
scientist and photographer whose photos of DNA strands enabled other
researchers to nail down the structure of the basic building block of genetics.
If you click on the doodle, it takes you to a search
result page that includes this
story from National Geographic. I couldn’t believe that publication refers
to Franklin as a “Legendary Female Scientist”.
What the hell? She was a meticulous and dedicated
researcher, who died much too young and was subsequently denied Nobel
recognition that other DNA explorers (notably Watson and Crick)—who actually
used her photos to advance their studies without her knowledge—were granted.
(The Nobel committee doesn’t award prizes posthumously,
and Franklin died in 1958, four years before Crick and Watson received theirs.)
I find it nothing short of bizarre that National G would
qualify their commentary on Google’s honor by designating her a “female
scientist”.
You’d have expected that in the 1950s; not in 2013. Grow
the hell up, National Geographic.
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