On July 20, 1969, 56 years ago, three astronauts reached the moon, 380,000 km away from Earth, four days after leaving Earth. Neil Armstrong, the commander of the lunar module, and Buzz Aldrin, the pilot, landed on the moon. Neil Armstrong was recorded as the first man to set foot on the moon. Is it because the world only remembers the first?
When we think of the moon landing, we think of Neil Armstrong, but we don’t know much about Buzz Aldrin, the second person to set foot on the moon, and Michael Collins, who was waiting in the command module on the moon. However, the mission would not have been impossible without Buzz Aldrin, who piloted the lunar module to land on the moon, and Michael Collins, the only astronaut not to land on the moon.
In 1953, two young scientists, James Watson of the United States and Francis Crick of the United Kingdom, published a paper revealing the double helix structure of DNA, the greatest discovery of modern biology in the 20th century. For this achievement, Watson, Crick, and another scientist, Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.
However, Watson and Crick would not have discovered the double helix structure of DNA if it had not been for the research achievements of Rosalind Franklin, a British female scientist who was Maurice Wilkins' fellow researcher. Franklin experimentally discovered a DNA structure using X-ray diffraction and accumulated a lot of data, which she made public. Based on her data, Watson and Crick built a molecular model of DNA and theoretically elucidated the reality of DNA.
Experiments using X-rays carry the risk of radiation exposure. Perhaps because of this, Franklin, who contributed more than anyone else to the discovery of DNA, unfortunately, died of ovarian cancer at the young age of 38 and did not receive the Nobel Prize due to the widespread sexism in the scientific community at the time and the custom of not awarding the Nobel Prize to deceased scientists. To commemorate Franklin, who was overshadowed by Watson and Crick, who were first-place winners, many biology books now include her photo and research achievement, “X-ray diffraction pattern No. 51.”
The phenomenon in which only the first place receives the spotlight, and the others do not is a product of competition. We often see this phenomenon in sports, school grades, college entrance exams, performance-based work, and political election results. However, we should not forget the efforts and value of the second and last-place winners overshadowed by the first-place winners.
The first-place winner is a value recognized only in a specific area and does not represent the whole. We should not forget that the values humans recognize as first place according to secular logic may be last place according to another logic. Also, we must not forget that the first person who represented the community was not only by his own ability but also by the many second-class roles that were faithful to their roles for the community. Now, our gaze, and the gaze of the first class, must be directed to the many second-class and last-class roles hidden within the first class.
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