Science · Chemistry

Rosalind Franklin

1920–1958 · British

X-ray crystallography; physical chemistry

Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose diffraction images of DNA, above all Photo 51, were crucial evidence for the double helix proposed by Watson and Crick in 1953. She also did important work on the structure of coal and carbon and, at Birkbeck, on viruses such as tobacco mosaic virus. She died of ovarian cancer at 37, four years before Watson, Crick and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize.

How to spot them

▸Photo 51, taken in 1952 with her student Raymond Gosling
▸King's College London; strained relations with Maurice Wilkins
▸Portrayed as 'Rosy' in James Watson's The Double Helix
▸Tobacco mosaic virus at Birkbeck with Aaron Klug
▸Brenda Maddox's biography 'The Dark Lady of DNA'; the ExoMars rover named after her

Key discoveries & works

Photo 51 (1952)

X-ray diffraction image of the B form of DNA, whose X pattern revealed a helix

Distinction between the A and B forms of DNA (1951–1953)

Showed that DNA's structure changes with humidity, clarifying earlier confusing images

Nature paper on DNA fibres published alongside Watson and Crick's double helix (1953)

One of three papers in Nature on 25 April 1953, co-written with Raymond Gosling

Graphitising and non-graphitising carbons (1940s–1951)

Research on coal and carbon structure, begun at the British Coal Utilisation Research Association and continued in Paris

Structure of tobacco mosaic virus (1950s)

Showed the RNA sits inside a hollow protein helix, working at Birkbeck College

Key ideas

Her precise diffraction data showed DNA's phosphate backbone lies on the outside of the helix
Her story is often cited in discussions of how women scientists' contributions were overlooked

Quick-fire facts

•Born in Notting Hill, London, into a prominent Anglo-Jewish family; studied at Newnham College, Cambridge
•Learned X-ray diffraction techniques in Paris in the late 1940s
•Maurice Wilkins showed Photo 51 to James Watson in early 1953 without her knowledge
•Moved from King's College London to J. D. Bernal's laboratory at Birkbeck in 1953
•Her colleague Aaron Klug went on to win the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
•Died of ovarian cancer in London on 16 April 1958, aged 37; Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously
•Anna Ziegler's play Photograph 51 was staged in London's West End in 2015 with Nicole Kidman as Franklin
•The European Space Agency's ExoMars rover is named Rosalind Franklin

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Sources

Brenda Maddox — Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
James D. Watson — The Double Helix