Rosalind Elsie Franklin, the brilliant chemist whose x-ray diffraction studies provided crucial clues to the structure of DNA and quantitatively confirmed the Watson-Crick DNA model, was born in London on July 25, , the second of five children in a prominent Anglo-Jewish family. Both he and his wife Muriel were active in charities and other community services. Rosalind attended St. Paul's School for Girls, which emphasized preparing its graduates for careers, not just for marriage.
She had demonstrated an early aptitude for math and science, and an easy facility for other languages she would eventually speak excellent French, good Italian, and passable German. Unlike many with a talent for languages, she had little ear for music; Gustav Holst, then music director at St.
Paul's, once noted that Rosalind had improved to the point of singing "almost in tune. Paul's in to enter Newnham College, one of two women's colleges at Cambridge University. Her father did not, as some accounts state, oppose her in this, though he might have preferred her to choose a more traditional course afterward. At Cambridge, Franklin majored in physical chemistry. Her undergraduate years were partly shaped by World War II; many instructors, especially in the sciences, had been pulled into war work.
In one letter Franklin noted, "Practically the whole of the Cavendish [Laboratory] have disappeared. Biochemistry was almost entirely run by Germans and may not survive. Franklin received her BA in , and was awarded a scholarship for a further year of research, and a research grant from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. She spent that year in the laboratory of R. Norrish, a noted pioneer in photochemistry. In , with the war still on, she had to decide whether to be drafted for more traditional war work or pursue a PhD-oriented research job in a field relevant to wartime needs.
For the next four years, Franklin worked to elucidate the micro-structures of various coals and carbons, and explain why some were more permeable by water, gases, or solvents and how heating and carbonization affected permeability.
In this original work, she found that the pores in coal have fine constrictions at the molecular level, which increase with heating, and vary according to the carbon content of the coal.
These act as "molecular sieves," successively blocking penetration of substances according to molecular size. Franklin was the first to identify and measure these micro-structures, and this fundamental work made it possible to classify coals and predict their performance to a high degree of accuracy.
After the war, Franklin began searching for different work. At the "labo" she learned how to analyze carbons using x-ray crystallography also called x-ray diffraction analysis , becoming very proficient with the technique. Rosalind took the view that she would be of more use to the war effort if she completed her chemistry degree. She was backed up on this point by both her mother and her aunt Alice, her father's eldest sister. As a young child Franklin attended a private school near to home, but then at the age of nine was sent off to Lindores School for Ladies, a boarding school in Bexhill, Sussex, based on the idea that it would help her delicate health because it was near the sea.
Two years later she joined St Paul's Girls' School, a day school, where she excelled in science, Latin, and sports. At the time St Paul's was one of the few schools in London where girls were taught science. In Franklin started studying Natural Sciences at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she majored in physical chemistry.
During her studies she shined in chemistry, mathematics, and physics. Her teachers during this time included the spectroscopist W. Price and J. Bernal, an early pioneer in X-ray crystallography and molecular biology. When Franklin graduated from Cambridge in women were prohibited from being awarded degrees. Only in , once Cambridge had changed its regulations, did Franklin gain her bachelor's degree.
After completing her undergraduate studies Franklin was awarded a research scholarship to do doctoral research under Ronald Norrish, a future Nobel Prize winner, but she relinquished this after a year to contribute to the war effort at the British Coal Utilization Research Association BCURA. After completing her undergraduate degree, Franklin first spent a year working as a researcher in R.
An expert in crystallographer and the application of X-ray diffraction to the study of rayon and other amorphous substances, Mering taught Franklin X-ray crystallography, which she applied to researching coal.
Franklin's work in this area was initiated by John Randall, director of the Biophysics Unit, and was done separately from that of Maurice Wilkins with whom she did not share an easy working relationship but who was also working on the structure of DNA. In Franklin was recruited by her former tutor Bernal, to Birkbeck College, where she applied x-crystallography to studying the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus and the structure of RNA. Her work in this area, however, was cut short, when aged just 38 years old she died of ovarian cancer.
Some commentators attribute Franklin's cancer to the x-ray radiation she had been exposed to during her work. Franklin was instrumental to discovering there were two forms of DNA. Franklin was born in London in and was educated in private schools and at Cambridge University. She showed an early passion for science, and after graduating, she worked as a research chemist in the British Coal Utilisation Research Association, with significant work on the structure of coals earning her a PhD from Cambridge in After the war, she found a job in Paris where she became proficient in analysing carbons using X-ray crystallography.
This data gave them the insight they needed to determine the true double helix structure of DNA, and they soon published a paper in Nature announcing their discovery.
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