Rosalind Franklin (jul 25, 1920 – apr 16, 1958)

Description:

Rosalind Franklin (July 25, 1920 - April 16, 1958), Biochemist

Life:
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in London, England in a well-to-do family. Rosalind Franklin always wanted to be a scientist but was discouraged by her family. She got her early education from St. Paul’s Girls’ school which was one of the few institutions at the time that taught physics and chemistry to girls. She later on entered Cambridge University to study chemistry and after her graduation she was awarded a research scholarship for graduate work. She spent a year in R.G.W. Norrish’s lab but without great success as Norrish wasn’t very enthusiastic about working with Franklin. She was later offered a research position in British Coal Utilisation Research Association (BCURA) which was a fairly new organization giving Franklin an opportunity to work independently and publish a few papers. In 1947 she moved to Paris for a PostDoc where she became an accomplished X-ray crystallographer.

Contributions to Science:
In 1951 Franklin became a research associate at King’s College London where she worked on X-ray diffraction studies and laid the groundwork for the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. She presented her data at a lecture in King's College at which James Watson was in attendance. Watson and Crick were at the Cavendish Laboratory and had been working on solving the DNA structure. Franklin did not know Watson and Crick but Wilkins showed them the X-ray data Franklin obtained. The data confirmed the 3-D structure that Watson and Crick had theorized for DNA. In 1953, both Wilkins and Franklin published papers on their X-ray data in the same Nature issue with Watson and Crick's paper on the structure of DNA. In 1953 Franklin was compelled to move to Birkbeck College owing to disagreement with her director and her colleague Maurice Wilkins. Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Unfortunately, Franklin did not get the much deserved award as the Nobel Committee did not make posthumous nominations.

Death:
At the age of 37 Rosalind Franklin died of ovarian cancer

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