Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (1920 - 1958) was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work on the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite reshaped molecular biology. Her high-resolution X-ray diffraction images of DNA, most famously the image known as Photograph 51, provided critical evidence for the double-helix model of the molecule.^[1]

Early life and education

Franklin was born in Notting Hill, London, into a prominent British Jewish family. She was educated at St Paul's Girls' School, one of the few schools of the period to teach physics and chemistry to girls, before entering Newnham College at the University of Cambridge, where she studied natural sciences and graduated in 1941.^[1]

She earned her doctorate from Cambridge in 1945 for research on the physical chemistry of coal and carbon, work carried out in association with the British Coal Utilisation Research Association.^[1]

X-ray crystallography in Paris

From 1947 Franklin worked at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'État in Paris, where she became an accomplished X-ray crystallographer and applied the technique to the study of carbon materials. She returned to England in 1951 to join the Medical Research Council biophysics unit at King's College London.^[1]

DNA and Photograph 51

At King's College, Franklin used X-ray diffraction to investigate the structure of DNA. Her measurements distinguished the A and B forms of the molecule, and in 1952 she and her student Raymond Gosling produced Photograph 51, a diffraction image of the B form that revealed its helical character.^[2]

This image and Franklin's unpublished data were shown to James Watson and Francis Crick at the University of Cambridge, informing their 1953 double-helix model of DNA. The extent of her contribution, and the manner in which her results were shared, has been widely discussed by historians of science.^[2]

Later work on viruses

In 1953 Franklin moved to Birkbeck College, London, where she led research on the structure of viruses. Working with a team that included Aaron Klug, she made significant contributions to understanding the structure of tobacco mosaic virus and began studies of the poliovirus.^[3]

Legacy

Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at the age of 37. Because the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously, she was not eligible when Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the structure of DNA.^[4]

Her contributions have since been widely recognised, and numerous institutions and initiatives bear her name. She is frequently cited as an example of a scientist whose work was undervalued in her lifetime.^[2]