Biology => molecular structures of DNA

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer. Her work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite.

Born 1920 in London, into an affluent and influential British Jewish family.

Franklin graduated in 1941 with a degree in natural sciences from Cambridge, and then enrolled for a PhD in physical chemistry. Disappointed by her professor’s lack of enthusiasm, she switched to took up a research position with the British Coal Utilisation Research Association in 1942 instead.

Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA while at King’s College London, particularly Photo 51, taken by her student Raymond Gosling, which led to the discovery of the DNA double helix for which Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. While Gosling actually took the famous Photo 51, Maurice Wilkins showed it to James Watson without Franklin’s permission.

Watson suggested that Franklin would have ideally been awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Wilkins, but it was not possible because the pre-1974 rule dictated that a Nobel Prize could not be awarded posthumously.

She died 16 April 1958 at the age of 37.

Franklin’s contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely unrecognized during her life. As a result, after her death, Franklin has been variously referred to as the “wronged heroine”, the “dark lady of DNA”, the “forgotten heroine”, a “feminist icon”, and, in reference to the American poet who became in death more than anyone could have imagined, the “Sylvia Plath of molecular biology”.