History in (and of) Photos

As we enter into our discussion of DNA, I would like to take the time to point out the interesting story behind one of the more well-known photographs in science.



The photo shows up everywhere, it is used as the frontspiece to the chapter in our textbook, and is probably found in every biology textbook published since 1970 or so. As a biologist, I think it ranks with this picture in historical importance; maybe not in total brain power, but at least in terms of the public consciousness. More people have seen the picture of Watson and Crick than of the 1927 physics meeting.

So what is the history of this picture; why, how, and when did it become so famous and widely used?

The picture was taken by Anthony Barrington Brown on May 21, 1953, about a month after publication of Watson and Crick's results on April 25. There were a total of eight photographs taken that day, of which three are commonly reproduced: the famous one above, the slightly less staged version shown below, and one more of Watson and Crick drinking tea (or coffee) in their office. The other prints are not widely reproduced, and a Google Image search failed to uncover them.



Barrington Brown's own account of the day the photographs were taken is interesting. A friend of Barrington Brown's contacted him and asked him to take some pictures for a story that would be sent in to Time magazine. Barrington Brown describes his first meeting with Watson and Crick, and the circumstances behind the posed pictures:

I was affably greeted by a couple of chaps lounging at a desk by the window, drinking coffee. "What's all this about?" I asked. With an airy wave of the hand one of them, Crick I think, said "we've got this model"
[...]
Anyway, I had only come to get a picture so I set up my lights and camera and said "you'd better stand by it and look portentous" which they lamentably failed to do, treating my efforts as a bit of a joke. I took four frames of them with the model and then three or four back with their coffee.

The picture was not used by Time, nor did it appear in a story in the campus newspaper Variety. Barrington Brown was paid 52 pence for the photos, and they were forgotten by all, including the photographer. Up to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in 1962, there appears to be no record of the photos being widely published or distributed.

In 1968, James Watson's autobiographical tale of the discovery of the DNA sttructure, The Double Helix was published. The popularity of the book greatly increased demand for pictures of the pair, and the Barrington Brown photo, which appears in the book, best seemed to capture the personalities of the researchers. Barrington Brown has never received royalty payments for the use of his photos, though he is actively pursuing them now.

In the past 40 years, the photographs have achieved near iconic status, not just of Watson and Crick's discovery, but of scientific research in general. A testament to the iconic stature of the photograph is the fact that Watson and Crick got together nearly 40 years later in an updated version of the photograph.