Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born on the 25th of July 1920 at 50 Chepstow Villas in Notting Hill, London. She entered a world where her father Ellis Arthur Franklin worked as a merchant banker and taught evening classes at the Working Men's College. Her mother Muriel Frances Waley came from a family deeply involved in social justice causes. Rosalind grew up with four siblings including an eldest son named David and younger brothers Colin and Roland. Her aunt Helen Caroline Franklin married Norman de Mattos Bentwich who served as Attorney General in Palestine. The family actively supported Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe during the late 1930s. They even took in two children including a nine-year-old Austrian girl named Evi Eisenstädter who shared a bedroom with Rosalind's sister Jenifer.
From age six Rosalind attended Norland Place School where she displayed exceptional scholastic abilities. Her aunt Mamie described her to her husband as alarmingly clever because she spent all her time doing arithmetic for pleasure. At age nine she moved to Lindores School for Young Ladies in Sussex which offered a seaside environment for her delicate health. By age eleven she enrolled at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith one of the few girls schools teaching physics and chemistry. She excelled in science Latin and sports while winning annual awards throughout her schooling years. Her only weakness was music despite efforts by composer Gustav Holst to investigate potential hearing problems or tonsillitis. In 1938 she passed matriculation with six distinctions earning a scholarship worth £30 per year plus an additional £5 from her grandfather.
World War II ended in 1945 when Franklin asked Adrienne Weill for help finding job openings for a physical chemist who knew little about physical chemistry but understood holes in coal. A conference in autumn 1946 introduced her to Marcel Mathieu director of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique. This led to her appointment on the 14th of February 1947 under Jacques Mering at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'État in Paris. Mering taught her practical aspects of applying X-ray crystallography to amorphous substances like rayon instead of regular crystals. She applied these techniques to further problems related to coal and other carbonaceous materials including changes to atomic arrangements during conversion to graphite.
Franklin published several papers on this work which became part of mainstream physics and chemistry regarding coal and carbon. She coined terms graphitising and non-graphitising carbon that remain standard today. Her earlier research at BCURA had studied coal porosity using helium to determine density. She discovered relationships between fine constrictions in coal pores and permeability of porous space. By concluding substances were expelled by molecular size as temperature increased she helped classify coals accurately. This work predicted performance for fuel purposes and production of wartime devices such as gas masks. The University of Cambridge awarded her a PhD in 1945 based on this thesis titled The physical chemistry of solid organic colloids with special reference to coal.
In January 1951 Franklin started working as a research associate in John Randall's Medical Research Council Biophysics Unit at King's College London. Randall redirected her work from proteins and lipids to DNA fibres because new developments required an experienced diffraction researcher. He reassigned Raymond Gosling the graduate student who had been working with Maurice Wilkins to be her assistant. Randall made this reassignment before Franklin even began working there due to pioneering work by Wilkins. When Wilkins returned from holiday he handed over both the Signer DNA sample and Gosling to Franklin.
Franklin used a new fine-focus X-ray tube and microcamera ordered by Wilkins which she refined adjusted and focused carefully. Drawing upon her physical chemistry background she supplied a critical innovation making a camera chamber controllable for humidity using saturated salt solutions. With this ingenious humidity-controlling camera she produced X-ray images of better quality than those of Wilkins. She immediately discovered that DNA samples could exist in two forms depending on relative humidity levels above or below 75 percent. On the structure of crystalline DNA she recorded analysis stating evidence for spiral meaning helical structure existed while straight chain untwisted was highly improbable. An immediate discovery showed phosphate groups lay outside the main DNA chain though she could not determine whether two or three chains were present.
Franklin left King's College London in mid-March 1953 for Birkbeck College where she described moving from a palace to slums yet found it pleasanter all the same. She was recruited by physics department chair John Desmond Bernal who promoted female crystallographers. Her new laboratories occupied 21 Torrington Square one of several dilapidated Georgian houses containing multiple departments. Despite cramped conditions she supervised research groups including students like Kenneth Holmes who joined in July 1955. In 1956 Franklin visited Berkeley where colleagues suggested researching polio virus structures.
Expo 58 the first major international fair after World War II opened in Brussels on the 17th of April 1958. Franklin had been invited to create a five-foot high model of tobacco mosaic virus starting work in 1957 using table tennis balls and plastic bicycle handlebar grips as materials. The exhibit opened at the International Science Pavilion exactly one day after her death. Her team published seminal works on TMV cucumber virus 4 and turnip yellow mosaic virus between 1956 and 1958 showing RNA wound along inner surfaces of hollow viruses. These findings contradicted earlier ideas held by eminent virologist Norman Pirie regarding uniform particle lengths.
Mid-1956 marked when Franklin first suspected health problems during a US work trip finding difficulty zipping her skirt due to abdominal bulging. Back in London consultation with Mair Livingstone revealed two tumours discovered during an operation on the 4th of September 1956. She spent time convalescing with friends including Anne Sayre Francis Crick's wife Odile and finally with siblings Roland and Nina Franklin where nieces and nephews bolstered spirits. Even undergoing cancer treatment she continued working producing seven papers in 1956 and six more in 1957.
At year end 1957 Franklin fell ill again admitted to Royal Marsden Hospital making her will on the 2nd of December naming three brothers executors and colleague Aaron Klug principal beneficiary receiving £3,000 plus her Austin car. Other beneficiaries included Mair Livingstone getting £2,000 Anne Piper £1,000 and nurse Miss Griffith £250 before remainder went to charities. She returned to work January 1958 promoted to Research Associate in Biophysics on the 25th of February falling ill again on the 30th of March. Rosalind died at age thirty-seven on the 16th of April 1958 in Chelsea London from bronchopneumonia secondary carcinomatosis and ovarian cancer.
Franklin never received a Nobel Prize nomination despite crucial contributions to DNA structure discovery leading to awards for Francis Crick James Watson and Maurice Wilkins in 1962. Her death occurred four years prior when rules prohibited posthumous awards unless nominations made before February 1st of award year. The prize recognized body of work on nucleic acids not exclusively DNA structure discovery which gained general acceptance late 1950s. Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl experimentally showed bacterial DNA replication into two double-stranded helices establishing biological significance by 1961.
Aaron Klug won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry developing crystallographic electron microscopy and structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes exactly what Franklin had started introducing to him. Many believe she would have shared the 1962 prize had she lived. Posthumous recognition began appearing decades later including blue plaques placed in 1992 commemorating her life at Drayton Gardens. King's College renamed Orchard Residence as Rosalind Franklin Hall in 1993 while Newnham College opened graduate residence named after her in 1995. A newly discovered asteroid also bears her name ensuring lasting scientific legacy.
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Common questions
When was Rosalind Franklin born and where did she grow up?
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born on the 25th of July 1920 at 50 Chepstow Villas in Notting Hill, London. She grew up with four siblings including an eldest son named David and younger brothers Colin and Roland.
What scientific discoveries did Rosalind Franklin make about coal and carbon before working on DNA?
Franklin published papers on coal porosity using helium to determine density and discovered relationships between fine constrictions in coal pores and permeability of porous space. She coined terms graphitising and non-graphitising carbon that remain standard today while predicting performance for fuel purposes and production of wartime devices such as gas masks.
How did Rosalind Franklin contribute to understanding the structure of DNA at King's College London?
Franklin produced X-ray images of better quality than those of Wilkins by refining a new fine-focus X-ray tube and creating a humidity-controlling camera chamber. Her analysis showed evidence for a helical structure existed while phosphate groups lay outside the main DNA chain though she could not determine whether two or three chains were present.
When did Rosalind Franklin die and what caused her death?
Rosalind died at age thirty-seven on the 16th of April 1958 in Chelsea London from bronchopneumonia secondary carcinomatosis and ovarian cancer. She had been admitted to Royal Marsden Hospital earlier that year after falling ill again in mid-1956 when she first suspected health problems during a US work trip.
Why did Rosalind Franklin never receive a Nobel Prize despite her contributions to science?
Franklin never received a Nobel Prize nomination because rules prohibited posthumous awards unless nominations made before February 1st of award year and her death occurred four years prior to the 1962 prize. The prize recognized body of work on nucleic acids not exclusively DNA structure discovery which gained general acceptance late 1950s.