Rosalind Franklin: the Unsung Heroine of DNA

by Linda Harris Sittig

Although you know Rosalind Franklin’s scientific discovery, you may not recognize her name.

That is because her accomplishment was overshadowed and credited to three men: Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins, who won the 1962 Nobel Prize for discovering the molecular structure of DNA.

However, their ‘discovery’ was based on Rosalind Franklin’s data.

Early Years

Born in July 1920 in Notting Hill, London, to an affluent Jewish family, Rosalind exhibited a robust academic aptitude from early childhood. By the age of six, when other children were playing games, Rosalind worked on arithmetic problems she designed for herself.

Recognizing her talents, her parents enrolled her in 1931 at St. Paul’s School for Girls in London because it was one of the few female schools teaching physics and chemistry. While there, Rosalind excelled in math, languages, and science and graduated with enough honors to win a scholarship to university.

However, her father asked her to give the scholarship to a deserving refugee student instead. This humanitarian act most likely stemmed from Rosalind’s parents had taken in two Jewish refugee children who had escaped from the Nazis on the Kindertransport program the same year Rosalind matriculated from St. Paul’s.

Higher Education and Research

Rosalind then attended college in Cambridge, England, to study chemistry and graduated with honors. She stayed at Cambridge on a research fellowship and eventually earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1945.

After WWII, Rosalind went to Paris to study with Jacques Mering, an X-ray crystallographer. With him, she learned how to apply X-ray diffraction to amorphous substances.

Then in 1950, Rosalind received a fellowship at King’s College in London to work in the Biophysics Unit. Her director, John Randall, asked Rosalind to begin work on DNA fibers because she was the only one with experience of experimental diffraction.

Randall then assigned Raymond Gosling to be her research assistant. Gosling had been Maurice Wilkins’ assistant up to that time.

DNA

In 1950 Swiss chemist Rudolf Signer was able to prepare a purified DNA sample from the thymus of a calf. Signer freely distributed the sample to Maurice Wilkins. Then while Wilkins was on holiday, Randall (having reassigned Gosling now to Rosalind) gave Rosalind the go-ahead to proceed with her research with the DNA sample Wilkins had obtained.

She immediately started applying her expertise with X-ray diffraction. She adjusted and refined an X-ray tube and camera to produce better X-ray images than had previously existed. She recorded her analysis in her lab notebook, “Evidence of spiral structure with refined photographs.”

Rosalind then presented her notes on the DNA sample at a lecture at King’s College. The date was November 1951.She continued her research throughout 1952, and by January 1953, she concluded that all DNA forms had helices (spirals). Next, she began to write a series of manuscripts about her conclusion.

At the same time, Cambridge researcher James Watson visited Rosalind’s lab and viewed her DNA X-ray photo.

On March 6, 1953, two of Rosalind’s manuscripts were considered for publication in Denmark.

On March 7^th, the next day, Francis Crick and James Watson completed a draft model of their DNA interpretation, showing a double helix. They were also alerted that Rosalind was leaving King’s College to transfer to Birkbeck College.

The Controversy

No one knows the exact moment Rosalind realized the DNA was undoubtedly a double helical molecule. Evidence from her lab books shows that by February 1953, she was convinced of the helical structure of DNA but was not sure if it was a double or single helix.

Crick and Watson, however, published their experimental DNA model on April 25, 1953, with one simple footnote acknowledging they had been stimulated in their research by the yet unpublished research of Rosalind Franklin.

Rosalind and Raymond Gosling did publish their evidence of the double helix, but not until July 25, 1953.

Then Rosalind turned her attention to RNA and the Tobacco Mosaic Virus.

In early 1958 The Brussels World’s Fair decided to exhibit her model of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus at the International Science Pavilion.

The Fair opened on April 17^th, and Rosalind died the next day, April 18^th, from ovarian cancer.

She was 37 years old, and her gift to the world went largely unnoticed outside of the field of X-ray science.

She had been a gifted student, a young woman who loved to travel and hike, and although never married, she dedicated her life to research and a small circle of like-minded scientific friends.

In James Watson’s 1968 memoir, Double Helix, he portrayed Rosalind Franklin as uncooperative, unattractive, and incompetent.

Really? Might he have chosen three other words to describe her brilliant contribution to science?

If DNA is the blueprint of our cells, then surely Rosalind Franklin should be described and remembered as a scientific architect – a premier architect.

I hope you enjoyed Rosalind’s story. If you are not yet a follower of this blog, please sign up on the right side bar and pass the blog on to a friend.

You can find my novels of three Strong Women, Cut from Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, and Counting Crows in bookstores and on line. A kindle version is available from Amazon. I also have a non-fiction book, B-52 DOWN about the 1964 B-52 that crashed in the western Maryland mountains during a blizzard with two nuclear bombs on board.

Wishing everyone well.

~Linda