Rosalind Franklin

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British chemist Rosalind Franklin is best known for her role in the discovery of the structure of DNA, and for her pioneering use of X-ray diffraction. She earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Cambridge University and learned crystallography and X-ray diffraction, techniques that she applied to DNA fibers. One of her photographs provided key insights into DNA structure. Other scientists used it as evidence to support their DNA model and took credit for the discovery. 

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born to Ellis Arthur Franklin, a politically liberal London merchant banker, and Muriel Frances Waley into an affluent and influential Jewish family on July 25, 1920, in Notting Hill, London, England. Rosalind was the elder daughter and the second child in the family of five children. She displayed exceptional intelligence from early childhood, knowing from the age of 15 that she wanted to be a scientist. She received her education at several schools, including North London Collegiate School, where she excelled in science, among other things. Rosalind enrolled at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1938 and studied chemistry. In 1941, she was awarded Second Class Honors in her finals, which, at that time, was accepted as a bachelor's degree in the qualifications for employment. She went on to work as an assistant research officer at the British Coal Utilisation Research Association, where she studied the porosity of coal—work that was the basis of her 1945 Ph.D. thesis "The physical chemistry of solid organic colloids with special reference to coal."

In the fall of 1946, Rosalind was appointed at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'Etat in Paris, where she worked with crystallographer Jacques Mering. He taught her X-ray diffraction, which would play an important role in her research that led to the discovery of "the secret of life"—the structure of DNA. In addition, she pioneered the use of X-rays to create images of crystalized solids in analyzing complex, unorganized matter, not just single crystals.

In January 1951, Rosalind began working as a research associate at the King's College London in the biophysics unit, where director John Randall used her expertise and X-ray diffraction techniques (mostly of proteins and lipids in solution) on DNA fibers. Studying DNA structure with X-ray diffraction, Rosalind and her student Raymond Gosling made an amazing discovery: They took pictures of DNA and discovered that there were two forms of it, a dry "A" form and a wet "B" form. One of their X-ray diffraction pictures of the "B" form of DNA, known as Photograph 51, became famous as critical evidence in identifying the structure of DNA. The photo was acquired through 100 hours of X-ray exposure from a machine Rosalind herself had refined.

John Desmond Bernal, one of the United Kingdom’s most well-known and controversial scientists and a pioneer in X-ray crystallography, spoke highly of Rosalind around the time of her death in 1958. "As a scientist Miss Franklin was distinguished by extreme clarity and perfection in everything she undertook," he said. "Her photographs were among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken. Their excellence was the fruit of extreme care in preparation and mounting of the specimens as well as in the taking of the photographs."

Despite her cautious and diligent work ethic, Rosalind had a personality conflict with colleague Maurice Wilkins, one that would end up costing her greatly. In January 1953, Wilkins changed the course of DNA history by disclosing without Rosalind's permission or knowledge her Photo 51 to competing scientist James Watson, who was working on his own DNA model with Francis Crick at Cambridge. Upon seeing the photograph, Watson said, "My jaw fell open and my pulse began to race," according to author Brenda Maddox, who in 2002 wrote a book about Rosalind titled Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA.

The two scientists did in fact use what they saw in Photo 51 as the basis for their famous model of DNA, which they published on March 7, 1953, and for which they received a Nobel Prize in 1962. Crick and Watson were also able to take most of the credit for the finding: When publishing their model in Nature magazine in April 1953, they included a footnote acknowledging that they were "stimulated by a general knowledge" of Rosalind's and Wilkins' unpublished contribution, when in fact, much of their work was rooted in Rosalind's photo and findings. Randall and the Cambridge laboratory director came to an agreement, and both Wilkins' and Rosalind's articles were published second and third in the same issue of Nature. Still, it appeared that their articles were merely supporting Crick and Watson's.

According to Maddox, Rosalind didn't know that these men based their Nature article on her research, and she didn't complain either, likely as a result of her upbringing. Rosalind "didn't do anything that would invite criticism … [that was] bred into her," Maddox was quoted as saying in an October 2002 NPR interview. However, she is often also quoted as a victim as well as prime example of sexism in the field of science whereby she was never accorded proper credit for her vast body of work while her male colleagues got all the attention despite openly using her research.

Rosalind left King's College in March 1953 and relocated to Birkbeck College, where she studied the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus and the structure of RNA. Because Randall let Rosalind leave on the condition that she would not work on DNA, she turned her attention back to studies of coal. In five years, Rosalind published 17 papers on viruses, and her group laid the foundations for structural virology. She led pioneering work at Birkbeck on the molecular structures of viruses. Her team member Aaron Klug continued her research, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1982.

As a person, Rosalind Franklin was best described as an agnostic. Her lack of religious faith apparently did not stem from anyone's influence, rather from her own inquisitive mind. She developed her scepticism as a young child. Her mother recalled that she refused to believe in the existence of god, and remarked, "Well, anyhow, how do you know He isn't She?" She however did not abandon Jewish traditions. As the only Jewish student at Lindores School, she had Hebrew lessons on her own while her friends went to church. She joined the Jewish Society while in her first term at Newnham College, Cambridge, out of respect of her grandfather's request. She confided to her sister that she was "always consciously a Jew". She loved travelling abroad, particularly trekking. She first ventured at Christmas 1929 for a vacation at Menton, France, where her grandfather went to escape English winter. A trip to France in 1938 gave her a lasting love for France and its language. She considered the French lifestyle as "vastly superior to that of English". In another instance, she trekked the French Alps with Jean Kerslake in 1946, which almost cost her her life when she slipped off on a slope, and was barely rescued. She made several professional trips to US, and was particularly jovial among her American friends and constantly displayed her sense of humour. William Ginoza of the University of California, Los Angeles later recalled that she was the opposite of Watson's description of her, and as Maddox comments, Americans enjoyed her "sunny side." She often expressed her political views. She initially blamed Winston Churchill for inciting the war, but later admired him for his speeches. She actively supported Professor John Ryle as an independent candidate for parliament in 1940, but he was unsuccessful. She did not seem to have intimate relationship with anyone and always kept her deepest personal feelings to herself. Since her younger days she avoided close friendship with the opposite sex.

In the fall of 1956, Rosalind discovered that she had ovarian cancer. She continued working throughout the following two years, despite having three operations and experimental chemotherapy. She experienced a 10-month remission and worked up until several weeks before her death on April 16, 1958, at the age of 37. She died four years before the Nobel prize was awarded to Watson, Crick and Wilkins for their work on DNA structure. She never learned the full extent to which Watson and Crick had relied on her data to make their model; if she suspected, she did not express any bitterness or frustration, and in subsequent years she became very friendly with Crick and his wife, Odile. It is clear that, had Franklin lived, the Nobel prize committee ought to have awarded her a Nobel prize, too – her conceptual understanding of the structure of the DNA molecule and its significance was on a par with that of Watson and Crick, while her crystallographic data were as good as, if not better, than those of Wilkins. The simple expedient would have been to award Watson and Crick the prize for Physiology or Medicine, while Franklin and Watkins received the prize for Chemistry. However, the Nobel Committee does not make posthumous nominations and hence Rosalind Franklin’s name was totally ignored at the time of granting the award. 

Source: Google search and Wikipedia.