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RAYMOND G. GOSLING (B. 1926)
A positive glass photographic slide of 2 X-ray images of structure A and structure B DNA strands with the fibre axis vertical, laminated black-paper border enclosing the images, the slide with adhesive-tape border (82 x 82mm). 3 applied paper labels captioned in manuscript 'SDNA. STRUCTURE A: STRUCTURE B XR91'; 'Dr Gosling. Medical School Guy's. SE1'; '25.6.68 [?]J5'. Provenance: Raymond Gosling (inscription on paper label; acquired from Gosling by the vendor).
AN ICONIC SCIENTIFIC IMAGE FROM THE COLLECTION OF RAYMOND GOSLING, THE PHOTOGRAPHER, DEPICTING STRUCTURE A AND STRUCTURE B DNA. As described in the note to the previous lot, Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling worked together at Medical Research Council's Biophysics Research Unit, King's College London, to perfect the technique of X-ray diffraction photography of DNA; as Franklin's research assistant Gosling was principally responsible for the photography. The samples which they photographed were of two types: structure A and structure B DNA, which correspond to the crystalline and non-crystalline forms of sodium thymonucleate fibres at relative humidities of 75 and 92 respectively. In the change from structure A to structure B caused by increased relative humidity, the sodium thymonucleate fibres were found to absorb water in excess of c. 40 of their weight, with a consequent increase in the fibre's length of c. 30 and a significant re-arrangement of the molecule. As Franklin and Gosling stated in 'Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate' (the paper which they contributed the April 1953 issue of Nature in which the structure of DNA was revealed), 'It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that in structure B the structural units of sodium thymonucleate (molecules on groups of molecules) are relatively free from the influence of neighbouring molecules, each unit being shielded by a sheath of water. Each unit is then free to take up its least-energy configuration independently of its neighbours and, in view of the nature of the long-chain molecules involved, it is highly likely that the general form will be helical. If we adopt the hypothesis of a helical structure, it is immediately possible, from the X-ray diagram of structure B, to make certain deductions as to the nature and dimensions of the helix' (pp. 10-11). This slide combines two X-ray images of DNA: the first of structure A and the second of structure B -- the image printed on p. 10 of 'Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids', to illustrate Franklin and Gosling's paper. A variant of the first image and the second are illustrated in The Double Helix, and the copy in lot 49 is annotated by Gosling 'The pattern which "kick-started" the whole story' beneath the structure A image and 'I actually "took" this X-ray pattern' beneath the reproduction of the structure B image. This slide was presumably prepared for educational use by Gosling, who was appointed Lecturer and Reader at Guy's Hospital Medical School in 1967 (subsequently becoming Emeritus Professor in Physics Applied to Medicine).
A positive glass photographic slide of 2 X-ray images of structure A and structure B DNA strands with the fibre axis vertical, laminated black-paper border enclosing the images, the slide with adhesive-tape border (82 x 82mm). 3 applied paper labels captioned in manuscript 'SDNA. STRUCTURE A: STRUCTURE B XR91'; 'Dr Gosling. Medical School Guy's. SE1'; '25.6.68 [?]J5'. Provenance: Raymond Gosling (inscription on paper label; acquired from Gosling by the vendor).
AN ICONIC SCIENTIFIC IMAGE FROM THE COLLECTION OF RAYMOND GOSLING, THE PHOTOGRAPHER, DEPICTING STRUCTURE A AND STRUCTURE B DNA. As described in the note to the previous lot, Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling worked together at Medical Research Council's Biophysics Research Unit, King's College London, to perfect the technique of X-ray diffraction photography of DNA; as Franklin's research assistant Gosling was principally responsible for the photography. The samples which they photographed were of two types: structure A and structure B DNA, which correspond to the crystalline and non-crystalline forms of sodium thymonucleate fibres at relative humidities of 75 and 92 respectively. In the change from structure A to structure B caused by increased relative humidity, the sodium thymonucleate fibres were found to absorb water in excess of c. 40 of their weight, with a consequent increase in the fibre's length of c. 30 and a significant re-arrangement of the molecule. As Franklin and Gosling stated in 'Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate' (the paper which they contributed the April 1953 issue of Nature in which the structure of DNA was revealed), 'It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that in structure B the structural units of sodium thymonucleate (molecules on groups of molecules) are relatively free from the influence of neighbouring molecules, each unit being shielded by a sheath of water. Each unit is then free to take up its least-energy configuration independently of its neighbours and, in view of the nature of the long-chain molecules involved, it is highly likely that the general form will be helical. If we adopt the hypothesis of a helical structure, it is immediately possible, from the X-ray diagram of structure B, to make certain deductions as to the nature and dimensions of the helix' (pp. 10-11). This slide combines two X-ray images of DNA: the first of structure A and the second of structure B -- the image printed on p. 10 of 'Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids', to illustrate Franklin and Gosling's paper. A variant of the first image and the second are illustrated in The Double Helix, and the copy in lot 49 is annotated by Gosling 'The pattern which "kick-started" the whole story' beneath the structure A image and 'I actually "took" this X-ray pattern' beneath the reproduction of the structure B image. This slide was presumably prepared for educational use by Gosling, who was appointed Lecturer and Reader at Guy's Hospital Medical School in 1967 (subsequently becoming Emeritus Professor in Physics Applied to Medicine).
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