and well-financed research workers following a good well-laid trail. For 'Rosy', in the book - I had come to know and respect her and to admire her too, as a very intelligent and brave woman who was the first to recognise and to measure the phosphorus atoms in the helix, which proves to be the outer one, thus showing Pauling to be wrong and the helix to be a double one, though this inference is not drawn. The forgotten heroine of the race to unravel the mystery of human DNA is to be honoured posthumously as part of a Government crusade against sexism in science. Rosalind Franklin has become a feminist cause clbre, the dedicated scientist held back by her male colleagues' refusal to acknowledge her vital role in one of the most important scientific discoveries of the century. While the three male scientists who helped establish the double-helix structure of DNA shared the Nobel prize for their breakthrough - based in large part on Franklin's detailed X-ray images of atoms - she won little public recognition and her early death robbed her of later fame. 'Rosy' was dismissed in James Watson's account of the discovery, The Double Helix , as a buttoned-up bluestocking who, her scientific partner believed, 'had to go, or be put in her place'. Only recently has her reputation begun to be restored. Now Patricia Hewitt, the Trade and Industry Secretary, is to create a Franklin Medal in her honour to raise the profile of other