Science History Institute library acquires original Rosalind Franklin materials and other artifacts

Science historians have a new resource they can tap to better understand the early days of molecular biology. The nonprofit Science History Institute (SHI) this week added a collection known as the History of Molecular Biology Collection to its library of publicly accessible materials. The collection includes 101 boxes of lab notebooks, letters, and other materials from several founding figures in the field of molecular biology starting in the middle of the 20th century.

The archive comes from the private collection of synthetic biology heavyweight Craig Venter and includes artifacts contributed by several other members of the scientific community. Michelle DiMeo, vice president of collections and programs at the SHI’s chemical history library, says Venter had shared the materials with historians in the past through his eponymous genomics institute but decided they would be more accessible and protected under the institute’s care.

Researchers can now study the trove of data and correspondence by appointment at the SHI’s headquarters in Philadelphia, and the organization has funding to help make such visits happen. “We have the largest fellowship program dedicated to the history of science in the United States,” as well as travel grants to support scholars, DiMeo says. She and other staff are now digitizing the archive and have started work on an exhibition they hope to open at the SHI’s museum in 2027.

The heart of the collection is a rich set of documents from the early 1950s, when Rosalind Franklin was part of the race to solve the chemical structure underpinning life’s genetic code, including original X-ray diffraction prints made by Franklin and her PhD student Raymond Gosling. The British chemist collaborated with James Watson and Francis Crick, who eventually shared a Nobel Prize with Maurice Wilkins in 1962 for the discoveries.

A person has to be alive to receive a Nobel Prize, and Franklin died in 1958. As tidy as that explanation may be, the world-changing intellectual collaboration between the scientists was interwoven with misogyny, jealousy, advocacy, and competition among the central figures. Some of those dynamics play out in the materials of the collection.

According to DiMeo, the archive includes an early draft of Watson’s bestselling memoir, The Double Helix, for example, as well as letters to Watson from peers questioning his disparagement of Franklin in the text. “We hope that people will come and write the next book about Rosalind Franklin and others here,” DiMeo says.