Her tombstone only references her research on viruses, and neither Watson nor Crick mentioned her name while accepting their 1962 Nobel Prize for their work on DNA.
She continued working until only weeks before her death from ovarian cancer.įranklin’s legacy took a long time to come to light. While at Birkbeck, Franklin published seventeen papers in total, with three appearing posthumously. Though not directly related to DNA, this research still allowed her to contribute even further to the scientific community’s understanding of the double helix form. In 1953, Franklin left King’s College to study the tobacco mosaic virus at Birkbeck College.
But despite her research playing a critical role, Watson and Crick’s work was published as their discovery alone Franklin’s research was released as merely supporting data and she received no credit. So, without her knowledge, they managed to obtain an uncommonly clear x-ray photograph from Franklin’s lab, along with her unpublished observations based on x-ray crystallography, allowing them to complete their model. But they were missing evidence to support this theory. She was coming close to solving DNA’s structure once and for all!Īt the same time, Jim Watson and Francis Crick had also been looking at the possibility of DNA having a double helix shape: two strands of DNA winding around each other, with elements connecting the strands in ladder-like rungs. Soon after arriving at the college, she realized that DNA could exist in two forms, and she went on to figure out DNA’s density as well as correctly theorize about the placement of the different components on its structure. In 1951, she took her expertise to King’s College, which had pioneered the use of x-ray diffraction techniques on biological material, but the College’s restrictions on women as well as miscommunication about Franklin’s responsibilities at the lab created a very tense and inefficient work environment.īut she didn’t let that stop her! Despite these setbacks, Franklin was able to contribute significant advances to DNA research.
Determined as she was, she got a degree in natural sciences from Newnham College at the University of Cambridge despite her father’s initial reluctance, going on to study the porosity of coal for her doctorate.įranklin later focused on x-ray crystallography: analyzing the way a crystal causes an x-ray beam to diffract, or bend, then using that information to figure out the crystal’s atomic structure. She’s best known for her contribution to discovering DNA’s structure-as well as the controversy surrounding it.įranklin, who was born to an influential British Jewish family, always excelled at school and decided to pursue a career in science at the ripe age of fifteen. Sometimes called the Dark Lady of DNA, Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958) was a prolific researcher in multiple scientific fields.
0 kommentar(er)
