Rosalind Franklin

This article is about the scientist; on the ship, see Rosalind Franklin (ship) .

Rosalind Franklin 1955

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (born July 25, 1920 in London ; died April 16, 1958 there ) was a British biochemist .

Franklin was a specialist in the X-ray structure analysis of crystallized macromolecules . As a scientist, she carried out extensive research into the structure of coal and coke as fuel and viruses . Her main research results were X-ray diffraction diagrams of DNA and their mathematical analysis; they contributed significantly to the elucidation of the double helix structure of DNA. Her research article, published together with her doctoral student Raymond Gosling on this topic in April 1953, appeared parallel to the article by James Watson and Francis Crick on the structure of DNA and agreed with its theoretical model. Watson and Crick had used Franklin's research without their knowledge and consent to decipher the DNA for which they later both received the Nobel Prize .

Life

Family and early years

Rosalind Franklin came from a respected Jewish family in England. Her great-uncle, Sir Herbert Samuel , had just been appointed High Commissioner of Palestine at the time of her birth , her father, Ellis Franklin, was a respected banker, and her mother, Muriel, came from a family of intellectuals and academics. Both parents attached great importance to a very thorough schooling and general education of their five children, of whom Rosalind was the second oldest. Her brother David was born in 1919, her younger brothers Colin in 1923 and Roland in 1926. Her sister Jennifer was born in 1929 when Rosalind was nine years old. The Franklins went on numerous trips with their children and traveled a lot abroad - rather unusual for the time. Her daughter Rosalind enjoyed these trips and also showed a keen interest in the natural sciences at the age of six. In a letter, Rosalind's aunt Mamie Bentwich described how Ellis Franklin's family spent their vacation and wrote about the six-year-old: "Rosalind is terrifyingly clever - she spends all her time arithmetic for sheer pleasure & her calculations are always correct."

Early science education

The schools Ellis and Muriel Franklin selected for their daughter encouraged this tendency. Rosalind spent two years in a girls' boarding school on the Channel Coast and was particularly enthusiastic about science classes. From January 1932, she attended St. Paul's Girls' School, the philosophy of which was to prepare every girl for a professional career, and which emphasized that the girls set goals beyond marriage. Above all, the school was characterized by excellent science teaching. In the report on the inspection visit, which the enrollment and school board of directors of the University of London held the school in 1935, in addition to the excellent science building complex, the qualifications of the teachers in physics, chemistry and biology were highlighted and the thorough and sustainable mathematics lessons were praised.

Her biographer Brenda Maddox suspects that the science education Rosalind Franklin received at St. Paul's Girls' School had a major impact on her scientific approach. Science was considered "an intellectual effort that requires cleanliness, thoroughness and perseverance rather than excitement and daring".

Academic years

Studied at Cambridge (1938–1941)

In the spring of 1938, the seventeen year old passed the entrance exams at Cambridge University . In the chemistry test, she achieved the best result and was therefore awarded a scholarship that covered a large part of the university fees. However, her father arranged for the money to be made available to one of the students who had fled National Socialist Germany to England.

In Cambridge, both women's colleges, Girton and Newnham , offered her a place to study. Rosalind Franklin chose Newnham and began studying science in October 1938, graduating in 1941. She spent her time away from the social college life. She sought relaxation in sport; she played squash and tennis, went on long bike rides and rowed.

During her studies, she increasingly specialized in crystallography and physical chemistry , which deals with structural properties and the behavior of atoms and molecules. She graduated with the best in physical chemistry, after which she was given a college scholarship to do research in Cambridge for a fourth year.

Female students, female lecturers

Rosalind Franklin studied at a time when a woman's academic training was far from being taken for granted. Brenda Maddox described the situation Rosalind Franklin found in her Franklin biography as follows:

“In Cambridge women had been admitted since 1860, Jews since 1871; but unlike Oxford, where women have been granted degrees since 1921, women were not accepted as 'university members' here. Nor were women regarded as full-fledged students, but merely as 'students from Girton and Newnham colleges'. They were only nominally entitled to one title. The 'tit title' was a good joke. Female students were allowed to attend men's lectures, but were expected to sit in the front rows, at least until the early 1930s ... Newnham faculty and principal were banned from major university ceremonies. Rather, they were expected to sit with hats and gloves with the wives of the faculty at traditional celebrations, when the men were wearing their scarlet academic robes and black, velvet doctoral hats. "

Women scientists found recognition only with great difficulty, especially in the natural sciences. It was not until 1945 that the first women scientists were accepted into the British Royal Society . 1944 was the year in which Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize, but Lise Meitner was passed over, as in the following years.

Rosalind Franklin experienced the reluctant acceptance of women into the ranks of scientists not only as a student. Throughout her research time, she suffered from the hesitant acceptance of female researchers in her field. Especially during her research at King's College in London, her gender seemed to contribute to the lack of acceptance by her colleagues.

Research on Coal - Rosalind Franklin's Contribution to the British War Effort

The Franklins and the War

As British Jews, the Franklin family closely followed developments in Nazi Germany . Rosalind's father in particular got involved when the flow of Jewish refugees increased from 1938 onwards. Ellis Franklin reduced his working hours at his bank and headed the guarantee department of the German-Jewish refugee committee; Together with his sister Mamie Bentwich, he also founded an organization that took care of the accommodation of those German-Jewish children who arrived in England. Two of them entered the Franklin family in 1938. In January 1945 Ellis Franklin was awarded the Order of Merit of the British Empire for this.

Rosalind herself was deeply affected by how indifferently her fellow students in Cambridge reacted to the pogrom against German Jews on the so-called Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938. She and her father agreed that there should be strong resistance to Hitler . The only disagreement was what their contribution should consist of beyond collecting donations and volunteer work for the refugee organizations. From her father's point of view, she put her studies above everything, while her brothers risked their lives for their homeland. In a letter dated June 1, 1942, she wrote to him:

“… I don't know why you got the idea that I would have 'complained' about having to give up my doctorate for war work. When I applied to research a year ago, I was asked if I wanted to do war work and I said yes. I was led to believe that the first problem I had to deal with was war work ... I [have] on several occasions, contrary to the advice of my superiors, explicitly emphasized that I would rather do war work now and do my doctorate later . "

Work for the British Coal Utilization Research Association (1942–1946)

The opportunity for war-important work presented itself to her when in 1942 a workforce of freshly graduated physicists was put together at the newly established "British Coal Utilization Research Association". Rosalind Franklin began as an "Assistant Research Officer" to investigate the physico-chemical properties of coal . The aim of these studies, which were classified as essential to the war effort, was to use coal more efficiently. At the same time, she worked as an air raid guard who checked the blackouts.

Her research was also the subject of her doctoral thesis; She received her doctorate in physical chemistry in 1945. The summary of her research was published in 1946 in the British journal Transactions of the Faraday Society under the title Thermal expansion of coals and carbonized coals .

The French Years (1947–1950)

Since she did not receive any further interesting research projects after completing this work, she went to Paris in 1947 to work at the “Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de L'Etat”, where she developed into a specialist in crystal structure analysis . She received the position through the mediation of the French-Jewish physicist Adrienne Weill , who had worked in Cambridge during the occupation of France by the National Socialists and from that time knew Rosalind Franklin well.

The laboratory, which was a government research facility, was headed by Jacques Mering , who, like his little more than twenty employees, appreciated Rosalind Franklin's ability to do complex experimental work. Under Mering's guidance, she learned to use X-rays to analyze the internal structure of charcoal and charcoal. For Rosalind Franklin, not only was the work very satisfying, she was also very comfortable with her work colleagues. She herself was responsible for a small group of employees who used X-ray diffraction analysis on carbon. She documented her work in numerous articles that appeared in specialist journals such as Acta Crystallographica or the Transactions of the Faraday Society. At the end of her years in Paris, she was an internationally recognized scientist in her field.

France, while Franklin lived there, suffered from the economic constraints of the post-war era, when everyday things were rationed. Franklin improvised by having food sent to her from England or, for example, by sending her mother the exact measurements for an underskirt, since the parachute silk used for this was easier to find in England than in France. Despite these difficult living conditions, the letters she wrote to her family suggest that the years in France were among her happiest. Even so, her family in particular urged her to return to England.

King's College (1950–1953)

Unclear distribution of tasks

Molecule of DNA; Rosalind Franklin's work was instrumental in deciphering the structure of DNA.

In 1950 she returned to London to continue research under the direction of John Turton Randall at King's College London . A three-year grant from the Turner and Newall Committee funded her research. She herself was undecided until the last moment whether to accept this scholarship or not to stay in the French laboratory where she had found her work so much fun.

One of the peculiarities of John Randall, who led the laboratory at King's College, was not to clearly delineate the responsibilities of the employees. He wrote to Rosalind Franklin shortly before starting her research there:

“This means that only you and Gosling [Franklin's PhD student] will work in the field of experimental X-ray optics, with Ms. Heller, a graduate of Syracuse [University], serving as an assistant for a while. In collaboration with Wilkins , Gosling found that fibers of deoxyribonucleic acid - the material sent by Professor Signer from Bern - provide remarkably good X-ray diagrams. "

At least Maurice Wilkins, who was deputy head of the laboratory after all, was not informed of this decision. Wilkins initially assumed that Franklin was his assistant and not a colleague who was largely equal to him. But even after this misunderstanding was cleared up, Wilkins had trouble accepting Franklin, and soon the two of them were barely talking to each other. It was not until the fall of 1951 that Randall ensured in a three-way discussion with Wilkins and Franklin that the areas of responsibility between the two scientists were clearly separated. Franklin was supposed to work with Signer's DNA and examine a different area than Wilkins. The unclear segregation of duties between Franklin and Wilkins continued in the literature on DNA decryption. Often only Wilkins is mentioned, occasionally Rosalind Franklin is called his assistant. Wilkins certainly held a higher position in the laboratory; Franklin was therefore not his assistant. It is in this context that one should understand the words about Rosalind Franklin, which James Watson , who later received the Nobel Prize for deciphering DNA, wrote about her in his book The Double Helix :

“Maurice [Wilkins] was a novice in the art of X-ray diffraction. He needed expert assistance and had hoped that Rosy [Rosalind Franklin], a seasoned crystallographer, could speed up his research. But Rosy saw the situation in a completely different way. She claimed that the DNA had been assigned to her as her own job and did not consider considering herself Maurice's assistant ... One thing was clear: Rosy had to go or be referred to her proper place. "

Franklin's work situation at King's College

That was not the only reason why Franklin was uncomfortable at King's College. In this traditional college, women scientists were not accepted as equal colleagues. For example, women were excluded from one of the dining rooms. In addition, the majority of her colleagues did not appreciate the research she had done to date. Apart from John Randall and the theoretical chemist Charles Coulson , her research work on coal and carbons was completely uninteresting to her other colleagues and the scientific work she carried out there was inestimable.

Another point added to Franklin's discomfort: King's College did not have the English intellectual elite, and Rosalind Franklin stood out from her peers in the way she presented herself and in her areas of interest. A long-time friend, the physicist Simon Altmann, described the situation as follows in an interview with Franklin's biographer Maddox:

"Well-read in two languages, she [Rosalind Franklin] was used to a civilized, intellectual life and conversations about painting, poetry, theater and existentialism ... Now she surrounded people who had never heard of Sartre , who mainly read the Evening Standard and who liked the kind of girls who got drunk at departmental parties, were passed from lap to lap and let their bra open. "

The DNA research at King's College

The scientists at King's College had a particularly pure DNA sample that was reminiscent of turnip tops in its consistency . A barely perceptible strand of DNA could be extracted from it with a glass rod. When water was removed from this fiber, its structure showed ordered, repetitive, quasi-crystalline properties. Rosalind Franklin developed methods of adding water back to A-form DNA. With the help of her X-ray diagrams, Franklin was able to show that the structure of the DNA had changed after the water uptake. Franklin found out that DNA molecules exist in two forms, A and B, which differ in their water content. She developed a process to keep the two forms in their purest form, and thus managed to take X-rays of the highest quality. Her pictures were the best recordings of DNA ever made. With the help of these images, she determined that the sugar and phosphate components of DNA are on the outside of the molecule and that DNA has the shape of a helix . According to their investigations, the DNA had to consist of either two, three or four spiral chains.

The hunt for the decryption of DNA

The decoding of DNA and the discovery of the double helix were “in the air” at the beginning of the 1950s. At the end of the 1940s, it had been proven that DNA consisted of long unbranched chain molecules. Oswald Theodore Avery had also shown in 1944 that in bacteria, at least in part, the DNA is the carrier of the genetic information. Alfred D. Hershey and his assistant Martha Chase reached similar conclusions in 1952 .

Numerous scientists have therefore made efforts to decipher the structure of DNA. Linus Pauling , who had already carried out extensive research on proteins, was one of the people who were most likely to be trusted to decipher them. He had already presented his model of the alpha helix structure for this in 1951 . At the beginning of 1953, Pauling published a flawed DNA model in which he assumed three DNA strands (Franklin wrote to him immediately after the publication, explaining with their analyzes why his model could not be correct). James Watson and Francis Crick - the latter had not even completed his PhD at the time - saw two young academics at Cambridge University, unknown at the time, who saw this field as an opportunity to gain scientific fame. However, they knew that they had to get results very quickly and that quick publication would be necessary if they wanted to forestall a breakthrough for Pauling. Both were in close contact with Maurice Wilkins from King's College.

While Franklin preferred an empirical approach, Crick and Watson's strength lay in developing theories. Using information obtained from a talk given by Franklin at King's College, Crick and Watson had developed a model in 1952 that consisted of three spiral chains. They therefore invited Franklin and Wilkins to Cambridge in late 1952 to present their model of DNA. For Franklin, the trip was a waste of time; she proved to her colleagues that her model was completely inadequate and left Cambridge angrily. She also refused to work with these colleagues because she thought it was too early to set up a model.

On January 30, 1953, Wilkins granted Watson and Crick access to Franklin's diffraction image No. 51 with a B-configuration of the DNA, which, in particular for Watson, was the optical proof that the DNA was a helix , without permission, granted Watson and Crick . Watson writes about this process in his book The Double Helix :

“I was surprised to learn that he [Maurice Wilkins], with the help of his assistant Wilson, had quietly copied part of Rosy's and Gosling's radiographic work. So he didn't need a long period of time to get his own research going. "

While Wilkins and Franklin did not want to propose a detailed structural model based on this recording, for Watson this was one of the decisive moments in the decoding of DNA, which he described in The Double Helix as follows:

“The moment I saw the picture, my jaw dropped and my pulse fluttered. The scheme was incomparably simpler than anything available until then ... [However, Maurice Wilkins suggested] the real problem was still the lack of a structural hypothesis that would allow the bases to be arranged in a regular manner on the inside of the spiral . That of course assumed that Rosy [Rosalind Franklin] was right if she wanted the bases in the center and the skeleton on the outside! Although Maurice assured me that he was now completely convinced of the correctness of their claims, I remained skeptical because Francis [Crick] and I still could not fully understand their evidence. "

Shortly afterwards, Watson and Crick came across an unpublished research report by Rosalind Franklin through Max Perutz , which detailed their observations of the change in DNA structure from the A-form to the B-form. The confidential report had been submitted to a committee of the Medical Research Council , of which Perutz was a member, for review, and in no case for distribution to other scientists. In any case, Watson and Crick drew the conclusion that this had to be a double helix, whereby Watson first built models with parallel strands in which the same bases were connected in pairs ( i.e. adenine with adenine, cytosine with cytosine, etc.). However, on March 6, 1953, the journal Acta Crystallographica received a publication by Franklin and Gosling in which the DNA was correctly described as a double strand, with the phosphate groups on the outside and the bases connected by hydrogen bonds on the inside. The enol forms of guanine and thymine presented in most textbooks at the time were a major problem when creating the DNA models . In fact, the American crystallographer Jerry Donohue gave the decisive hint that in reality the keto forms should exist, which could result in other combinations of hydrogen bonds, e.g. B. then the pairing of adenine with thymine in two antiparallel strands was more likely. Watson and Crick then created the corresponding model of the double helix on March 7, whereby their achievement lies in the correct and complete interpretation of Franklin's investigations, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 in addition to further work.

In April 1953, three articles on the structure of DNA appeared in the scientific journal Nature : In the first, Watson and Crick presented their model - and admitted in their almost one-page article:

"We have also been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr. MHF Wilkins, Dr. RE Franklin and their co-workers at King's College, London. "

In the next following articles, Wilkins, Franklin, and their co-workers published their experimental data confirming the double helix model of Watson and Crick. The publication of the two articles by King's College scientists in parallel with that of Watson and Crick was due to the intervention of John Randall, who wanted to ensure that this way his laboratory would at least get credit for the experimental work done, albeit that Honor for setting up the model went to Cambridge scientists.

At first, Watson and Crick insisted that they did not know the data on Franklin's X-ray spectroscopic findings from their unpublished research report. However, Watson published his book The Double Helix in 1968 , in which he describes his memories of this project and where he also admits to having seen its dates without anyone at King's College knowing about it (quote from Watson's book The Double Helix: “I knew about her documents more than she thought ”). Crick, who later became good friends with Franklin, confirmed that the development of the model would not have come about without Franklin's data.

The final years at Birkbeck College (1953–1958)

Franklin moved to Birkbeck College in 1953. At King's College, she was released on condition that she no longer worked on the DNA. Franklin led a team of scientists at Birkbeck College and published numerous articles on the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus . Compared to King's College, the laboratory there was much worse equipped, but she felt very comfortable in the working atmosphere there. John Desmond Bernal , who led the laboratory there, valued Franklin as an excellent scientist. With her not uncomplicated manner, she also offended Birkbeck College; however, she worked with a team that coped well with her quirks. In particular with her colleague Aaron Klug , who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1982, she had an intensive collegial collaboration that produced extensive results in the context of plant virus research. Among other things, she was able to demonstrate that the tobacco mosaic virus does not crystallize compactly, but rather in a tubular shape as a helix.

Rosalind Franklin does not seem to have resented the questionable access to their data by Wilkins, Crick and Watson, at least Francis Crick. The professional correspondence with Francis Crick from 1956/1957 was friendly in tone. James Watson supported her when she tried to get a scholarship for Aaron Klug. She seemed to have graduated from DNA research when she moved from King's College to Birkbeck College. Since she was invited to a lecture tour in the USA in 1954 because of her coal research, which was followed by a second one in 1956, she certainly did not lack recognition from her scientific colleagues. She received similar recognition for her virus research.

In the fall of 1956, Rosalind Franklin was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She continued her research until shortly before her death in April 1958. Obituaries for her have appeared in the London Times , the journal Nature and the New York Times . She was called "a representative of a select line of pioneers who examined the structure of nucleoproteins in relation to viral diseases and genetics". In the philanthropic tradition of her wealthy family, she appointed Aaron Klug as her main heir, who with the help of this financial support was able to continue his research work in Great Britain.

Private life

Rosalind Franklin was an avid and daring mountaineer and a passionate traveler; her friends and relatives described her as a fun, happy and lively companion who was good with children.

Especially during her time in Paris, she was the contact point for numerous friends and relatives, whom she cooked in French with devotion. She met up with her French colleagues to dance, or they went on bathing trips together. This is to be noted because her image was for a long time influenced by James Watson's book The Double Helix , which caricatured her as a blue stocking. It is also true, however, that she was temperamental, gruff, and impatient, especially in her work environment.

Her relationship with men was rather distant - possibly also because she considered a scientific career and marriage and children to be incompatible. There are some indications that she was very fond of Jacques Mering. Mering, however, was not only married, but had a very long relationship with one of Franklin's French colleagues. Franklin seems to have accepted that Mering was otherwise emotionally bound. Immediately before she was diagnosed with cancer, a closer relationship seems to have begun with the American scientist Don Casper , with whom she briefly worked at Birkbeck College.

Rosalind Franklin and the Nobel Prize

It is now accepted that Franklin's work provided an essential basis for determining the structure of DNA and that it would have taken much longer to be discovered without their X-ray diffraction diagrams and their related analyzes. It is also undisputed that it was the accomplishment of Watson and Crick to draw the right conclusions from their work. Her long-time colleague, the future Nobel Prize winner Aaron Klug , was able to use her notebooks to show that she had provided evidence on February 23 that both the A and B forms of DNA were two-chain helices. The only thing missing was the knowledge that the base pairs of the DNA carried the genetic code. This is the conclusion drawn by Watson and Crick on February 28, 1953, after they - as Watson later described in "The Double Helix" - had access to part of their X-ray diffraction data without Franklin's knowledge.

The Nobel Prize - which since 1974 has only been awarded to people who were still alive at the time the award was announced and previously only to those who were nominated before February of the award year (Franklin was never nominated) - Watson, Crick and Wilkins received the 1962 “for the discovery of the molecular structure of nucleic acids and their importance for the transmission of information in living beings ”. Significantly, in their Nobel Prize speeches, Watson and Crick did not mention Rosalind Franklin, who had died just four years earlier, and the key role their data played in clarifying the structure of DNA.

Aaron Klug, who last worked with her, remembered Rosalind Franklin in his 1982 Nobel Prize speech. He pointed out how much she had been his role model, and at the same time emphasized his conviction that she would also have received this greatest scientific award if she had only lived long enough.

2008 Franklin was a Honorary Horwitz Prize (Honorary Horwitz Prize) awarded.

The "dark lady" of DNA

The image that posterity has of Rosalind Franklin was for a long time largely shaped by the way James Watson described it in his story The Double Helix in 1969 . Watson admitted on the first pages of his story that the deciphering of the DNA was a "matter of 5 people", namely - in order - Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, Linus Pauling, Francis Crick and Watson himself. Nevertheless, he described Franklin, whom he always condescendingly called "Rosy" in his book - a nickname she had strictly rejected all her life - in the following words:

“She did nothing to emphasize her feminine qualities. Despite her sharp features, she was not unattractive, and she would have been gorgeous even if she had shown the slightest interest in her clothes. She didn't. She didn't even use lipstick, the color of which might have contrasted with her sleek black hair, and at thirty-one she wore clothes as unimaginative as any blue-stocked English teenager. In this respect, Rosy could well be thought of as the product of an unsatisfied mother who found it highly desirable that intelligent girls learn jobs that would save them from marrying boring men. "

Rosalind Franklin's lecture about her research, on the basis of which the first, still flawed DNA model built by Crick and Watson was created, is commented on by Watson with the following words: “For a moment I wondered what she would look like if she took off her glasses and tried something new with her hair. "

Watson's biographer Ernst Peter Fischer registered the difference between the picture Rosalind Franklin's biographers paint of her and the one created by Watson's narration and excused this as follows:

“It remains incomprehensible how Rosalind Franklin, who is portrayed by her biographers as intellectual, idealistic, lively and capable of experiencing, in her time and in connection with Wilkins could become the threatening“ dark lady ”that Jim experienced and then in this form too in his book. You shouldn't blame him for not being able to cope with the difficult situation as an inexperienced 20-year-old, which has to do with historical times - we are in post-war England - as well as with personal status. The conversation between men and women is not easy anyway. ”“ How difficult must it have been between an immature 24-year-old young man and a mature “dark beauty”? Probably Jim [Watson] - like all men - was afraid of women with such characteristics, especially when they suddenly invaded the world of men. "

But despite such insights, Rosalind Franklin's image remained shaped in posterity by negative-sounding sections in Watson's story, although it ended with conciliatory and appreciative words:

“In 1958 Rosalind Franklin died at the age of 37. Since my first impressions of her (recorded in this book) - both personally and scientifically - have largely proven to be false, I would like to say something about her scientific achievements here. Your X-ray work in the King's Laboratory is increasingly recognized as excellent. The mere fact that it distinguished the A and B forms of DNA would have been enough to make it famous. But their achievement was even greater when, in 1952, using Patterson's superposition methods, they demonstrated that the phosphate groups must be on the outside of the DNA molecule. I had a professorship in the States now, so I couldn't see her as often as Francis, whom she often went to for advice or, if she had done something particularly nice, to make sure that he was with hers Justifications matched. All of our previous squabbles were long forgotten, and we both learned to appreciate their personal sincerity and magnanimity. A few years too late we realized what struggles an intelligent woman has to fight to be recognized by scientists, who often see women as a distraction from serious thinking. Rosalind's integrity and exemplary courage were revealed to all who saw how, even though she knew that she was terminally ill, she never complained and continued her work at a high level until a few weeks before her death. "

In a book about the discovery of DNA that was first published in 1997, Paul Strathern wrote about Rosalind Franklin, whom he addressed by first name, unlike her male colleagues:

“Rosalind was highly intelligent and very attractive, even if she did without make-up and dressed without any fancy. However, Britain remained in the Stone Age in terms of gender relations during the 1950s. Wilkins just had no idea what to do with a woman in his lab. "

This perception of an outstanding scientist, which was primarily reduced to external characteristics, contributed to Rosalind Franklin becoming an often cited example of discrimination against women in science (see also Matilda effect ), which ultimately resulted in greater appreciation of her contribution to DNA -Decryption resulted. The fact that her name is now known to a wider public can also be traced back to a portrait filmed by the BBC in 1987, in which the actor Jeff Goldblum played James Watson. She now has a residential building for graduate students from Newnham College, and in the garden in front of it stands a bust of Rosalind Franklin. Her photo hangs next to that of Watson, Wilson and Crick in the National Portrait Gallery in London. King's College inaugurated a Franklin-Wilkins building in 2000, honoring Maurice Wilkins, who worked there for 53 years, and Rosalind Franklin, who worked there for just over two years and never felt comfortable.

Rosalind Franklin Research Fellowship

At the Dutch University of Groningen , the five-year Rosalind Franklin Fellowship was launched in 2002 to promote women in science . The well-endowed scholarship is intended to help establish more women professors in the natural sciences.

Rosalind Franklin University

Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science (2013)

In 2004 , Finch University of Health Sciences, located in North Chicago , Lake County, Illinois , changed its name to Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science . The university's logo shows Rosalind Franklin's Photo 51 , which was crucial in unraveling the structure of DNA.

Rosalind Franklin Award

The Royal Society has presented the Rosalind Franklin Award for the advancement of women in science and technology since 2003 .

Trivia

Rosalind-Franklin-Strasse

On October 31, 2016, the city of Kiel, the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and its medical faculty as well as the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein named a street within the University Medical Center in honor of Rosalind Franklin as a pioneer and role model of molecular genetic medicine.

There is a Rosalind-Franklin-Strasse in Hennef .

Since 2018 there has been a Rosalind-Franklin-Strasse on the Beutenberg Science Campus in Jena.

Mars rover from ESA Rosalind-Franklin

The Mars rover ExoMars , which is to be sent to Mars by the European space agency ESA in 2022 to look for traces of life there, was named after Franklin.

Play photo 51

The stage play Photo 51 by the American author Anna Ziegler , which tells the life story of Franklin, premiered in 2008 at the Vernacular Theater in Maryland and on October 27, 2010 at the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York . In 2015, theater and film director Michael Grandage staged the play with Nicole Kidman in the leading role in London's West End . In January 2016 it was announced that Grandage also wants to film the play with Kidman. In Germany, Photograph 51 was shown at the English Theater Berlin in 2012 . The German-language premiere, entitled Foto 51, took place in January 2017 at Hamburg's Ernst-Deutsch-Theater .

literature

swell

1. ↑ Jenifer Glynn: My Sister Rosalind Franklin . Oxford University Press, 2012.
2. ↑ The Structure of Sodium Thymonucleate Fibers. I. The Influence of Water Content BY ROSALIND E. FRANKLIN AND RG GOSLING, Acta Cryst. (1953) 6, 673-677.
3. ↑ Nobel prize to be awarded to dead scientist , The Guardian 2011
4. ↑ Stephanie Pappas: Newfound Nobel Letters Reveal Secrets of DNA Prize , Live Science, April 24, 2013
5. ↑ James Watson Nobel Prize Speech
6. ^ Francis Crick Nobel Prize Speech
7. ↑ Aaron Klug's Nobel Prize Speech
8. ^ Columbia University Medical Center: Past Recipients of the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize
9. ↑ ESA: ESA's Mars rover has a name - Rosalind Franklin. Retrieved February 9, 2019 . 
10. ↑ After “Genius”, another offer for Nicole Kidman ( memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: DIE ZEIT Online, January 13, 2016.

The publications on DNA in 1953

• JD Watson, FH Crick: Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid . In: Nature London 171.1953 (Apr 25), 737-738. ISSN  0028-0836
• MH Wilkins, AR Stokes, HR Wilson: Molecular structure of deoxypentose nucleic acids . in: Nature. London 171.1953 (Apr 25), 738-740. ISSN  0028-0836
• RE Franklin, RG Gosling: Molecular configuration in sodium thymonucleate . in: Nature. London 171.1953 (25 Apr), 740-741. ISSN  0028-0836

Literature on the history of DNA decoding

• James D. Watson: The Double Helix. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1968, 1993. ISBN 3-499-16803-0 (cited are p. 27f, p. 65, p. 131, p. 134)
• Ernst Peter Fischer : In the beginning there was the double helix - James D. Watson and the new science of life. Ullstein, Munich 2003. ISBN 3-550-07566-9 (pp. 159ff. Are cited)
• Aaron Klug: The Discovery of the Double Helix. in: T. Krude (Ed.): DNA, Changing Science and Society. University Press, Cambridge 2003. ISBN 0-521-82378-1
• Paul Strathern: Crick, Watson & the DNA. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1998. ISBN 3-596-14112-5 (first published in English 1997, cited are p. 52f)
• Robert Olby: The Path to the Double Helix. The Discovery of DNA. Dover 1994. ISBN 0-486-68117-3
• Maurice Wilkins : The third man of the double helix , Oxford University Press 2003

Rosalind Franklin biographies

• Anne Sayre: Rosalind Franklin and DNA . WW Norton & Co., New York 1975.
• Jenifer Glynn: Rosalind Franklin, 1920-1958. in: E. Shils, C. Blacker (Eds.): Cambridge Women - Twelve Portraits. University Press, Cambridge 1995. ISBN 0-521-48287-9
• Brenda Maddox: Rosalind Franklin. The discovery of DNA or a woman's struggle for scientific recognition. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2002. ISBN 3-593-37192-8 (cited are p. 25, p. 42)
• Svetlana Bandoim: Gender Bias in Science, an Analysis of the Careers of Kathleen Lonsdale , Dorothy Hodgkin , and Rosalind Franklin , OCLC 75182013 (Thesis (BS), Butler University Indianapolis, 2006).
• Jenifer Glynn: My Sister Rosalind Franklin: A Family Memoir. Oxford University Press, New York 2012. ISBN 978-0-19-969962-9 .

Web links

Commons : Rosalind Franklin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Rosalind Franklin in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography, literature & sources on Rosalind Franklin on FemBio.org of the Institute for Women's Biography Research
• Denis Grady: A Revolution at 50; 50 Years Later, Rosalind Franklin's X-Ray Fuels Debate New York Times , February 25, 2003
• Jane J. Lee: 6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism. Rosalind Franklin In: National Geographic
• Photographs and recordings of Rosalind Franklin in the collection of the National Library of Medicine (Engl.)

Remarks

1. ↑ Franklin rejected this nickname; see the section on the relationship between Franklin and Watson.

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on December 8, 2004 in this version .