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Rosalind Franklin
Life Details
Born: July 25th, 1920. Died: April 16th, 1958.
Introduction
Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist who found fame for being one of the key scientists to open up the structure of DNA, as well as using X-ray diffraction.
Early Life
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in Notting Hill, London, to an affluent and influential Jewish family. From her early childhood years, she showed exceptional intelligence, and from the age of 15, she knew she wanted to be a scientist. She studied chemistry at Newnham Colleg in Cambridge in 1938, and in 1941 she was awarded Second Class Honors in her finals.
Having uprooted to Paris, in the autumn of 1946, she teamed up with Jacques Mering, who taught her X-ray diffraction, which would become an important aspect of her research that led to the discovery of the 'secret of life' - the structure of DNA. She also used X-rays to create images of crystallised solids by using unorganised matter, as well as single crystals.
At the turn of 1951, Franklin returned to the UK to work as a research associate at the King's College London in the biophysics unit, where director John Randall used her expertise on X-ray diffraction techniques on DNA fibres. It was here where she worked with her student Raymond Gosling and made her discovery. Taking pictures of DNA and discovering that there were two forms of it: a dry 'A' form, and a wet 'B' form. A now-famous photo (Photograph 51) of the 'B' form of DNA evidenced the structure of DNA.
This photo was taken over 100 hours of X-ray exposure by a device that Franklin has refined herself.
Later Life & Death
Franklin developed ovarian cancer in 1956, and later died in 1958. John Desmond Bernal, one of England's most well-known and controversial scientists, and a pioneer in X-ray crystallography, spoke highly of Franklin around the time of her death, noting that she was distinguished by extreme clarity and perfection in everything she undertook.
