Rosalind Franklin and the DNA structure discovery event

Rosalind Franklin (Photo: physicsweb)

Rosalind Franklin was born on July 25, 1920 in a family of middle-class British Jews. The second child in the family with two three boys and girls. The first Jewish professor of London University. Despite her poor health, Rosalind had a happy childhood and the Frankin brothers enjoyed modern education so they developed their properties. Rosalind had a very early ambition to do everything that her three brothers could do.

Rosalind Franklin was a thoughtful but determined and highly motivated child, who would later become a volunteer and be blessed with a strong personality that radiates the joy of life. She attended the Saint Paul High School for Girls, which specializes in Physics and Chemistry. From the age of 15, Rosalind decided to choose science, something very rare in 1935, and until later she kept that intention even though her father wanted her to follow charitable activities.

In 1938, Rosalind was admitted to a university for female students, Newnham College. At that time the women's universities were not of Cambridge University. Only the highest of 300 female students out of 5300 male students. Until 1949, female college graduates were still not considered part of the University, but Rosalind passed a High Physics degree at Cambridge University.

In the 1930s, all students who were receiving Cambridge scholarships were forced to give up their scholarships if they married. Rosalind chose to study.

DNA image taken by X-ray diffraction, 1953 (Photo: genome.jgi-psf.org)

She received a scholarship to work with RGW Norrish , who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967. She did not match Norrish, because of her determination, she could only work with a relative independence. She befriended a French, refugee scientist in Cambridge, Miss Adrienne Will, later a famous metallurgist. After the start of that failure, Rosalind Franklin was a research place at the British Coal Research Association (CURA, British Coal Research Association). At the age of 22, working with young physicists at Cambridge University, and with the appropriate work: examining the properties of the microtructure of coal, Rosalind was delighted.

In 1945 she was awarded a Ph.D. at Cambridge University and in 1946 was recognized as a gifted scientist.

After the war, she wanted to change jobs. Thanks to Adienne Weill and the scientific work process, she got a job at CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) in Paris.

In 1947, she returned to work at the Central Laboratory of Chemistry. Jacques Méring taught her about X-ray emission techniques and crystallography (cristallographie) X-rays. Time to live in Paris, from 1947 to 1950 is probably Rosalind's happiest time. Here, she befriended the couple Vittorio Luzzati. Here, she published many scientific articles on amorphous phase of carbones (phases amorphes du carbone)

She hopes to apply X-ray emission techniques to biological materials .

In 1951 Rosalind returned to England, working at King's college, London, where JT Randall, Biophysique, director of biophysics, asked her to study the structure of DNA.

King's College is a place where female scientists are not allowed to go to the club's cafeteria but to use student cafes. Rosalind Franklin was isolated for three years while working at King's College. She was only contacted by a PhD student R. Gosling, who would be her collaborator in every article about DNA. She disagreed with Maurice Wilkins, a biophysicist who also studied DNA like her, who later won the Nobel Prize. However, she still achieved significant scientific results in her three years there. After constructing a state-of-the-art X-ray machine, she obtained movies of DNA in the form of B. She presented her first results in October 1951 at a conference at King's College, among attendees, J. Watson - working at Cavendish Lab. Cambridge University with Francis Crick, on the same topic. The picture she took was called " Photo 51 ".

The process of subsequent events is controversial : M. Wilkins gave J. Watson in February 1953 beautiful plates made by Rosalind with X-rays. These images are an important factor for Watson. and Crick built the DNA structure in March 1953. Rosalind seemed almost ready to answer this structure. In April 1953 Nature published the DNA structure of Watson and Crick. Therefore, Rosalind decided to leave the hated working environment of King's college through Birkbeck College. Here, she worked until the end of her life on the crystal map (cristallographie) of viruses along with South American collaborators, Aaron Klug, and became the world famous scientist in three areas: coal, DNA and virus. .

In 1956 Rosalind had ovarian cancer and died in 1958, at the age of only 37, four years before Watson, Crick and Wilkins won the Nobel Prize. Ironically, in the address given to them, they did not honor her, who should have been replaced by M. Wilkins if she lived until 1962!