Some time last year the papers of Rosalind Franklin, the crystallographer whose X-ray diffraction images of DNA led directly to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, were digitised.

This digitisation project forms part of the Wellcome Library’s shared online resource for the history of genetics, Codebreakers:Makers of Modern Genetics.

The papers of the pioneers of modern genetics, also including Crick and Watson and Maurice Wilkins, have been collected together for the first time and made freely available in this £3.9million project. The archive contains over a million pages of first-hand notes, letters, sketches, lectures, photographs and essays from the circle of brilliant minds responsible for uncovering the structure of DNA. The site lays bare the personal and professional thoughts, rivalries, blind alleys and breakthroughs of the scientists whose ideas transformed our understanding of the matter of life.

Besides the Archives Centre’s contribution, collections from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, University of Glasgow, King’s College London, UCL (University College London) and the Wellcome itself have all been gathered together. The vast collections contain both iconic documents, such as Crick’s preliminary sketches of the double helix and Franklin’s x-ray diffraction ‘photo 51’, and everyday exchanges; complex research notes and personal ephemera. The biological revolutions of the 50s and 60s are recorded in the scientists’ own words and intellectual influences and legacies, including the archive of the Eugenics Society, provide context for the complicated historical development of ideas around heredity and genetics.