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Rosalind Franklin




Rosalind Elsie Franklin (July 25, 1920 - April 16, 1958) was a molecular
biologist who assisted in the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Franklin was born and died in London, England.

Rosalind Franklin earned her doctorate degree in physical chemistry at
Cambridge University in 1945. She learned X-ray diffraction techniques
during three years' study in Paris at the Laboratoire Central des Services
Chimiques de L'Etat, returning to England to work as a research associate at
King's College London with John Randall.

Without her knowledge, another Randall research associate, Maurice Wilkins
showed some of her X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA to James Watson,
whereupon Watson, with Francis Crick, published in Nature magazine on April
25, 1953 an article describing the double-helical structure of DNA. Articles
by Wilkins and Franklin illuminating their X-ray diffraction data supporting
the findings of Watson and Crick were published in the same edition.

Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958; it was almost certainly caused by
exposure to radiation in the course of her research. Wilkins, Watson, and
Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.

Much has been written on the role that Franklin played in the discovery of
the structure of DNA. While it is clear that her work was an important basis
of the correct deduction of its structure, the correct deduction itself was
for the most part the work of Watson and Crick. Whether, given time,
Franklin would have reached the same deduction in the rather competitive
race to discover the structure of DNA (including such figures as Linus
Pauling) is unknown.

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