However her father did not support her career. What is it about Rosalind Franklin that fascinates you? Are there any aspects of her life or work that strike you as particularly remarkable?įranklin was also inspired to be a scientist by her father. His enthusiasm was contagious, and I grew curious of the world and how things worked.

We were always in the outdoors and watched a lot of documentaries. He has a deep love of animals and the environment. Matosin, what made you become a scientist? She had been his role model, he said, and he expressed his belief that she would also have been awarded the Nobel Prize, if only she had lived long enough and been able to continue her research.ĭr. In their Nobel Prize speech, given four years after Franklin’s death, Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins failed to mention Franklin at all. Rosalind Franklin seized her opportunity and made a reputation for herself through her zeal and tenacity.įollowing spells at the British Coal Utilisation Research Association in London, the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de L'Etat in Paris, where she specialized in X-ray crystallography, and at King’s College and Birkbeck College in London, Rosalind Franklin died at a very young age from ovarian cancer in April 1958 – probably as a result of prolonged exposure to X-rays.

However, though women could study there, they were unable to gain the same degrees as their male counterparts.

At 17, Rosalind Franklin passed the Cambridge entrance examination, gaining admission to the prestigious women-only Newnham College. As a result, the girls received support from a very early stage. Together with her colleague Aaron Klug, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry himself in 1982, she contributed to identifying the structure of the plant virus that afflicted not only tobacco, but also paprika and tomatoes.īorn Jin London, Rosalind Franklin was the daughter of a Jewish banking family who placed high value on the education of their two daughters and three sons. She also went on to publish numerous articles on the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus during her time at Birkbeck College. Maurice Wilkins, Franklin’s colleague at King’s College London, showed the image and other unpublished files to James Watson and Francis Crick – without her knowledge.Įven if asked what her most important discovery was, Rosalind Franklin would never suggest this now legendary image of deoxyribonucleic acid – instead, she would point to her achievements in carbon research that contributed to improvements to gas mask technology in the Second World War, or the progress she made in virus research. She had refined X-ray crystallography so precisely that she was able to capture the sharp image of life’s blueprint. Though Franklin had contributed significantly to the discovery, as the only women involved, her work was not acknowledged.īy the time she took the famous Photo 51, an image of DNA that guided Francis Crick and James Watson’s research, Franklin was already a renowned scientist. The two men, Francis Crick and James Watson, soared above her: in 1962, four years after Franklin's premature death at the age of 37, Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize along with Maurice Wilkins for their work on the molecular structure of DNA. In his book Double Helix, James Watson dismissively referred to her as “Rosy”. Rosalind Franklin is often by-passed, overlooked. Her name is usually mentioned in connection with that of two others: Francis Crick and James Watson.

Historical role models