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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

Chien-Shiung Wu, who conducted the experiment that proved Lee’s (and Yang’s) theory didn’t share the Nobel Prize with them in 1956. When I read people lamenting the fact that Rosalind Franklin didn’t get the Nobel due to sexism I wonder why Wu is not mentioned. For more information on the circumstances see https://physicsworld.com/a/overlooked-for-the-nobel-chien-sh...

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> the fact that Rosalind Franklin didn’t get the Nobel due to sexism

The primary reason why Rosalind Franklin didn't get a Nobel is that she died in 1958. It's maybe not easy to speculate what would have happened in the alternate timeline where she had lived until the Nobel nominations started to happen.

In his memoir of their discovery, The Double Helix, James Watson suggests that, had Franklin not died due to cancer a few years after their ground-breaking research, she might have shared their Nobel. He further speculates that since her protege Aaron Klug later won the Nobel in chemistry for his X-ray crystallography work (techniques she introduced him to), it wouldn't be far-fetched to imagine her having been a double laureate.

The primary reason Franklin didn't get the Nobel is that she didn't contribute the key component of the discovery: that DNA is a double helix that is antiparallel.

For those unaware: the Nobel is not awarded posthumously.

I believe a large part of it is that DNA is a famous discovery, and lots of people have heard of the double helix story. far fewer would know about Lee and Yang or understand the first thing about what they discovered.

I think part of it was there a number of subsequent experiments that would also confirmed Lee & Yang's prediction in short order.

My PhD advisor worked with Wu at Columbia. He held her in very high esteem.

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