Scientist Spotlight: Rosalind Franklin1
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in London, England. Her family was
well-to-do and both sides were very involved in social and public
works. Franklin's father wanted to be a scientist, but World War I cut
short his education and he became a college teacher instead. Rosalind
Franklin was extremely intelligent and she knew by the age of 15 that
she wanted to be a scientist. Her father actively discouraged her
interest since it was very difficult for women to have such a career.
However, with her excellent education from St. Paul's Girls' School, one
of the few institutions at the time that taught physics and chemistry to
girls Franklin entered Cambridge University in 1938 to study
chemistry.
When she graduated, Franklin was awarded a research scholarship to
do graduate work. She spent a year in R.G.W. Norrish's lab without
great success. Norrish recognized Franklin's potential but he was not very encouraging or supportive
toward his female student. When offered the position as an assistant research officer at the British Coal
Utilization Research Association (CURA), Franklin gave up her fellowship and took the job.
CURA was a young organization and there was less formality on the way research had to be done.
Franklin worked fairly independently, a situation that suited her. Franklin worked for CURA until 1947
and published a number of papers on the physical structure of coal.
Franklin's next career move took her to Paris. An old friend introduced her to Marcel Mathieu who
directed most of the research in France. He was impressed with Franklin's work and offered her a job as
a "chercheur" in the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'Etat. Here she learned X-ray
diffraction techniques from Jacques Mering.
In 1951, Franklin was offered a 3-year research scholarship at King's College in London. With her
knowledge, Franklin was to set up and improve the X-ray crystallography unit at King's College.
Maurice Wilkins was already using X-ray crystallography to try to solve the DNA problem at King's
College. Franklin arrived while Wilkins was away and on his return, Wilkins assumed that she was
hired to be his assistant. It was a bad start to a relationship that never got any better.
Working with a student, Raymond Gosling, Franklin was able to get two sets of high-resolution photos
of crystallized DNA fibers (Figure 1). She used two different fibers of DNA, one more highly hydrated
than the other. From this she deduced the basic dimensions of DNA strands, and that the phosphates
were on the outside of what was probably a helical structure.
She presented her data at a lecture in King's College at which James Watson was in attendance. In his
book The Double Helix, Watson admitted to not paying attention at Franklin's talk and not being able to
fully describe the lecture and the results to Francis Crick. Watson and Crick were at the Cavendish
Laboratory and had been working on solving the DNA structure. Franklin did not know Watson and
Crick as well as Wilkins did and never truly collaborated with them. It was Wilkins who showed Watson
and Crick 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.
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In 1962, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to James Watson, Francis Crick, and
Maurice Wilkins for solving the structure of DNA. The Nobel committee does not give posthumous
prizes.
After King’s College Rosalind Franklin focused her research efforts on viruses and in particular the
Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV). Her research led her to believe that TMV was a hollow tube of protein.
She hypothesized that the RNA of this virus was single-stranded and helical. Her characteristic
perfectionism in experimental procedure and technique led to the discovery that the RNA was actually
embedded in the proteins and not contained only in the core as expected. The descriptions Franklin
provided were incredibly detailed, including the angle of the location of the RNA relative to the axis of
the virus.
Franklin was passionate about her research and felt that it would lead to a greater understanding of
viruses that plagued man. She expanded her research to include the polio virus and a potato virus, but
her research was cut short when she developed ovarian cancer. She was extremely frustrated, knowing
her work on viruses was not completed. Franklin died in London on April 16, 1958. Her research was
presented at the 1958 World's Fair and received the accolades it deserved.
Figure 1: X-ray diffraction image of DNA taken by Franklin and Gosling.
QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT:
 Is it typical that a single person makes major discoveries in science?
 Was Rosalind Franklin treated fairly by her peers?
 Is it easier for women and people of color to carry out scientific research today
versus 60 years ago?