Rosalind Franklin
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| Rosalind Franklin |
| Image:Rosalind Franklin.jpg A recent painting of Franklin |
| Francis Crick |
| Rosalind Franklin |
| James Watson |
| Maurice Wilkins |
Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July, 1920 – 16 April, 1958) was a British physical chemist and crystallographer who made important contributions to the understanding of the fine structures of DNA, viruses, coal and graphite. Franklin is best known for her contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. In the years following, she led pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic and polio viruses. She died in 1958 of cancer of the ovary.
Contents |
[edit] Background
Franklin was born in London into an affluent and influential British-Jewish family.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 3</ref> Her great uncle was Herbert Samuel (later Viscount Samuel) who was Home Secretary in 1916 and the first practicing Jew to serve in the British Cabinet.<ref name="Samuel">Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 7</ref> He was also the first High Commissioner (effectively governor) for the British Mandate of Palestine.
Her aunt Helen was married to Norman Bentwich who was Attorney General in the British Mandate of Palestine.<ref>Segev, Tom (2000): One Palestine, Complete, (ISBN 0-349-11286-X) Abacus History.</ref> She was active in trade union organization and women's suffrage, and was later a member of the London County Council.<ref name="p31">Rosalind Franklin and DNA, p. 31</ref><ref name="p40">Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 40</ref>
Rosalind's uncle Hugh Franklin was also a supporter of women's suffrage, and spent six weeks in prison in 1910 for attacking Winston Churchill with a dog whip because of Churchill's opposition to this cause.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 28</ref><ref name="p31" />
Rosalind Franklin was educated at St Paul's Girls' School<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 25</ref><ref>Rosalind Franklin and DNA, p. 41</ref> where she excelled in Latin<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 30</ref> and sport.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 26</ref> Her family were actively involved with a Working Men's College, where Ellis Franklin, her father, taught electricity, magnetism and the history of the Great War in the evenings and later became vice principal.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 20</ref><ref>Rosalind Franklin and DNA, p. 35</ref> Later they helped settle Jewish refugees from Europe who had escaped the Nazis.<ref name="p40" />
[edit] Education and Career
[edit] University education
In the Summer of 1938 Franklin went to Newnham College, Cambridge. She passed her finals in 1941, but was only awarded a decree titular, as women were not entitled to degrees (BA Cantab.) from Cambridge at the time.
[edit] British Coal Utilisation Research Association
She worked for Ronald Norish between 1941 and 1942. Because of her desire to do war work during World War II, she worked at the British Coal Utilisation Research Association in Kingston-upon-Thames from August 1942, studying the porosity of coal. Her work helped spark the idea of high-strength carbon fibres and was the basis of her doctoral degree-"The physical chemistry of solid organic colloids with special reference to coal and related materials" that she earned in 1945.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, pp.40-82</ref><ref>Rosalind Franklin and DNA pp. 47-57</ref>
[edit] Laboratoire central des services chimiques de l'État
After the war ended Franklin accepted an offer to work in Paris with Jacques Mering.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, page 87</ref> She learned x-ray diffraction techniques during her three years at the Laboratoire central des services chimiques de l'État.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 88</ref> She seemed to have been very happy there <ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 92</ref> and earned an international reputation based on her published research about the structure of coal.<ref> R. E. Franklin: "Influence of the bonding electrons on the scattering of X-rays by carbon", Nature (1950) volume 165 page 71 Entrez PubMed 15403103</ref> In 1950 she sought work in England<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 108</ref> and in June 1950 she was appointed to a position at King's College London.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 111</ref>
[edit] King's College London
In January 1951, Franklin started working as a research associate at King's College London in the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Biophysics Unit, directed by John Randall.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 124</ref> Although originally she was to have worked on x-ray diffraction of proteins in solution, her work was redirected to DNA fibres before she started working at King's.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 114</ref><ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, pp. 143-144</ref> Maurice Wilkins and Raymond Gosling had been carrying out x-ray diffraction analysis of DNA in the Unit since 1950. <ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 121</ref>
| DNA pioneers |
|---|
| William Astbury |
| Oswald Avery |
| Erwin Chargaff |
| Max Delbrück |
| Jerry Donohue |
| Raymond Gosling |
| Phoebus Levene |
| Linus Pauling |
| Sir John Randall |
| Erwin Schrödinger |
| Alec Stokes |
| Herbert Wilson |
Franklin, working with her student Raymond Gosling <ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 129</ref> started to apply the expertise she had gained in x-ray diffraction techniques to the structure of DNA. They discovered that there were two forms of DNA: at high humidity (when wet) the DNA fiber became long and thin, when it was dried it became short and fat.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 153</ref><ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 154</ref> These were termed DNA 'B' and 'A' respectively. The work on DNA was subsequently divided, Franklin taking the A form to study and Wilkins the 'B' form.<ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 158</ref><ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 155</ref> The x-ray diffraction pictures taken by Franklin at this time have been called, by J. D. Bernal, "amongst the most beautiful x-ray photographs of any substance ever taken".<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 153</ref>
In February 1953 Francis Crick and James Watson of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge University had started to build a model of the B form of DNA using similar data to that available to the team at King's. Model building had been applied successfully in the elucidation of the structure of the alpha helix by Linus Pauling in 1951,<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 147</ref><ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 158</ref> but Rosalind Franklin was opposed to building theoretical models, taking the view that building a model was only to be undertaken after the structure was known.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 161</ref><ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 176</ref>
Watson and Crick then indirectly obtained a prepublication version of Franklin's DNA X-ray diffraction data, and a prepublication manuscript by Pauling and Corey, giving them critical insights into the DNA structure.<ref>Hubert P. Yockey (2005)Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, p9,10.</ref>
Francis Crick and James Watson then published their model in Nature on 25 April 1953 in an article describing the double-helical structure of DNA with a small footnote to Franklin's data.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 212</ref> Articles by Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin <ref>R. Franklin and R. G. Gosling:Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate, Nature (1953) volume 171 pages 740-741.full text</ref> illuminating their x-ray diffraction data published in the same issue of Nature supported the Crick and Watson model for the B form of DNA.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 210</ref> Rosalind Franklin eventually left King's College London in March 1953 to move to Birkbeck College in a move that had been planned for some time.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 168</ref>
[edit] Birkbeck College, London
Franklin's work in Birkbeck involved the use of x-ray crystallography to study the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) under J. D. Bernal<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 229</ref> and was funded by the Agricultural Research Council(ARC).<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 235</ref> In 1954 Franklin began a longstanding and successful collaboration with Aaron Klug.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 249</ref> In 1955 Franklin had a paper published in the journal Nature, indicating that TMV virus particles were all of the same length, <ref>Franklin, R.E. (1955) Structure of tobacco mosaic virus. Nature 175:379-381</ref> this was in direct contradiction to the ideas of the eminent virologist Norman Pirie, though her observation ultimately proved correct.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 252</ref>
Franklin worked on rod like viruses such as TMV with her Ph.D. student Kenneth Holmes, while Aaron Klug worked on spherical viruses with his student John Finch, Franklin coordinated the work and was in charge.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 254</ref> Franklin also had a research assistant, James Watt, subsidised by the National Coal Board and was now the Leader of the "ARC Group" at Birkbeck.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 256</ref> By the end of 1955 her team had completed a model of the TMV and were working on viruses affecting several plants, including potato, turnip, tomato and pea.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 262</ref> Franklin and Don Casper produced a paper each in Nature that taken together demonstrated that the RNA in TMV is wound along the inner surface of the hollow virus.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 269</ref> <ref>Franklin, R.E. (1956) Location of the ribonucleic acid in the tobacco mosaic virusparticle. Nature 177:928</ref>
[edit] Illness and death
In the summer of 1956, while on a work related trip to the United States of America (USA) Franklin first began to suspect a health problem.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 284</ref> An operation in September of the same year revealed two tumours in her abdomen.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 285</ref> After this period of illness Franklin spent some time convalescing at the home of Crick and his wife Odile.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 288</ref> She continued to work and her group continued to produce results, seven papers in 1956 and a further six in 1957.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 292</ref> In 1957 the group was also working on the polio virus and had obtained funding from the Public Health Service of the National Institutes of Health in the USA.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 296</ref> At the end of 1957 Franklin again fell ill and was admitted to the Royal Marsden Hospital. She returned to work in January 1958 and was given a promotion to Research Associate in Biophysics.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 302</ref> She fell ill again on the 30th of March <ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p.305</ref> and died on the 16th of April of cancer of the ovary.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p.307</ref> Exposure to x-ray radiation is sometimes considered a possible factor in her illness, though she was no more reckless than other laboratory staff of the time. Other members of her family have died of cancer, and the incidence of cancer is known to be disproportionately high amongst Ashkenazi Jews.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p.320</ref>
[edit] Controversies after death
Various controversies have surrounded Rosalind Franklin; these have all come to light after her death.
[edit] Allegations of sexism at King's College
There have been allegations that Rosalind Franklin was discriminated against because of her gender:
One of the allegations is that King's, as an institution, was sexist, the thrust of the allegation being that women were excluded from the staff dining room, and had to eat their meals in the student hall or away from the University. <ref>Rosalind Franklin and DNA, p.97</ref><ref>Bryson, B. A Short History of Nearly Everything. (2004), page 490. Black Swan edition 0 552 99704 8</ref> This does not appear to be the whole story. Whereas it is true that there was a dining room for the exclusive use of men (as was the case at other University of London colleges at the time), there was also a mixed gender dining room that overlooked the river Thames, and many male scientists refused to use the male only dining room, due to the preponderance of theologians.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 128</ref>
The other accusation regarding gender is that women were under-represented in John Randall's group, the claim is that there was only one other woman in the group and that the women were excluded because of their gender.<ref>Rosalind Franklin and DNA, p.99</ref> In fact women seem to have been (by the standards of the time) exceptionally well-represented in the group, representing eight out of thirty-one members of staff,<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 133</ref> or possibly closer to one in three.<ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 256</ref>
[edit] Contribution to the model of DNA
Rosalind Franklin's contributions to the Crick and Watson model include an X-ray photograph of B-DNA (called photograph 51),<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, pp. 177-178</ref> that was briefly shown to James Watson by Maurice Wilkins in January 1953,<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 196</ref><ref>Crick, F. H. C. What Mad Pursuit, p67 ISBN 0-465-09137-7</ref> and a report written for an MRC biophysics committee visit to King's in December 1952. The report contained data from the King's group, including some of Rosalind Franklin's work, and was given to Francis Crick by his thesis supervisor Max Perutz, a member of the visiting committee.<ref>Elkin, L.O. Rosalind Franklin and the Double Helix Physics Today March 2003, p. 61</ref><ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, pp. 198-199</ref> Maurice Wilkins had been given photograph 51 by Rosalind Franklin's PhD student Raymond Gosling, because she was leaving King's to work at Birkbeck, there was nothing untoward in this,<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, pp. 196</ref><ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 198</ref> though it has been implied, incorrectly, that Maurice Wilkins had taken the photograph out of Rosalind Franklin's drawer.<ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 257</ref> Likewise Max Perutz saw no harm in showing the MRC report to Francis Crick as it had not been marked as confidential. Much of the important material contained in the report had been presented by Franklin in a talk she had given in November 1951, which James Watson had attended.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 199</ref><ref>Watson, James: Letter to Science, 164, p. 1539, 27 June 1969.</ref> The upshot of all this was that when Francis Crick and James Watson started to build their model in February 1953 they were working with very similar data to those available at King's. Rosalind Franklin was probably never aware that her work had been used during construction of the model.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 316</ref>
[edit] Recognition of her contribution to the model of DNA
On the completion of their model, Francis Crick and James Watson had invited Maurice Wilkins to be a co-author of their paper describing the structure.<ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 213</ref><ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 205</ref> Maurice Wilkins turned down this offer, as he had taken no part in building the model.<ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 214</ref> Maurice Wilkins later expressed regret that greater discussion of co-authorship had not taken place as this may have helped to clarify the contribution the work at King's had made to the discovery.<ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 226</ref> There is no doubt that Rosalind Franklin's experimental data were used by Crick and Watson to build their model of DNA in 1953 (see above). That she is not cited in their original paper outlining their model may be a question of circumstance, it would have been very difficult to cite the unpublished work from the MRC report they had seen.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 207</ref> It should be noted that the x-ray diffraction work of both Maurice Wilkins and William Astbury are cited in the paper, and that the unpublished work of both Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins are acknowledged in the paper.<ref>Crick, F. H. C. and Watson, J. D. (1953) Molecular structure of nucleic acids, Nature 171 pp. 737-738</ref>
[edit] Nobel Prize
The rules of the Nobel Prize forbid posthumous nominations.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 205</ref> Since Rosalind Franklin had died in 1958 she was not eligible for the Nobel Prize awarded to Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins in 1962.<ref>The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962, for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material, Nobelprize.org</ref> The award was for their body of work on nucleic acids and not exclusively for the discovery of the structure of DNA.<ref name="nobel2">The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 242</ref> By the time of the award Maurice Wilkins had been working on the structure of DNA for over ten years, and had done much to confirm the Crick-Watson model.<ref>The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 240</ref> Francis Crick had been working on the genetic code at Cambridge and James Watson had worked on RNA for some years.<ref name="nobel">The Third Man of the Double Helix, p. 243</ref>
[edit] Posthumous recognition
- 1982, Iota Sigma Pi designates Franklin a National Honorary Member
- 1992, English Heritage placed a blue plaque on the house Rosalind Franklin grew up in.<ref name="recognition">Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 322</ref>
- 1995, Newnham College dedicated a residence in her name and put a bust of her in its garden.<ref name="recognition" />
- 1997, Birkbeck, University of London School of Crystallography opens the Rosalind Franklin laboratory.<ref>Sir Aaron Klug opens new Laboratory</ref>
- 1998, National Portrait Gallery added Rosalind Franklin's next to those of Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins.<ref name="recognition" /><ref>NPG pictures</ref>
- 2000, King's College London opened the Franklin-Wilkins Building in honour of Dr. Rosalind Franklin's and Dr. Maurice Wilkins' work at the college.<ref>Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, p. 323</ref>
- 2003, the Royal Society established the Rosalind Franklin Award, for an outstanding contribution to any area of natural science, engineering or technology.<ref>The Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award (2003): The Royal Society web page. Retrieved 21 July 2006.</ref>
- 2004, Finch University of Health Sciences/The Chicago Medical School, located in North Chicago, IL, changed its name to Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.<ref> Dedication of Rosalind Franklin University</ref>
- The U.S. National Cancer Institute awards the Rosalind E. Franklin Award for Women in Science.
[edit] References
<references/>
[edit] Major sources
- Maddox, Brenda Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, 2002. ISBN 0-00-655211-0.
- Wilkins, Maurice, The Third Man of the Double Helix, an autobiography ISBN 0-19-280667-3.
- Sayre, Anne. 1975. Rosalind Franklin and DNA. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. ISBN 0-393-32044-8.
[edit] Further reading
- Watson, James D. (1980). The double helix: A personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. Norton. ISBN 0-393-01245-X.
- Olby, Robert, The Path to The Double Helix: Discovery of DNA, (1974). MacMillan ISBN 046681173
- Chomet, S. (Ed.), D.N.A. Genesis of a Discovery, (1994). Newman-Hemisphere Press: www.pantadeusz.zoomshare.com or e-mail: publications@zoomshare.com or phone/fax: 07092 060530
- Crick, Francis, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (1990), Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-09138-5
- Krude, Torsten (Ed.) DNA Changing Science and Society: The Darwin Lectures for 2003 CUP 2003, includes a lecture by Sir Aaron Klug on Rosalind Franklin's involvement in the determination of the structure of DNA.
- Freeland Judson, Horace, The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology (1995) Penguin Books. First published (1977) Jonathan Cape. ISBN 13579108642.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- The Papers of Rosalind Franklin
- My aunt, the DNA pioneer
- The New Yorker: "Photo Finish: Rosalind Franklin and the great DNA race" by Jim Holt
- "Rosalind Franklin and the double helix" in "Physics Today" magazine
- Nova: "Secret of Photo 51"
- DNA: A Marvelous Molecule ChemHeritage, Women in Chemistry
- Women in Science
- Light on a Dark Lady
- King's College London team: Franklin, Gosling, Randall, Stokes, Wilkins, and Wilson
- "Rosalind Franklin’s work on coal, carbon, and graphite", by Peter J F Harris in PDF format
- Energia Vol.6 No.6 (1995) (University of Kentucky centre forApplied Energy Research). Contains Rosalind Franklin Article in PDF format
- Wellcome Trust Rosalind Franklin page.
- Our DNA heritage goes on the block On the sale of Jeremy Norman's archive. The Telegraph 5th February 2003
- First press stories on D.N.A.
- Clue to chemistry of hereditary found, NY Times, 12 June 1953, PDF.
- A revolution at 50 Selection of NY Times articles 50 years on.
- Quotes by Robert Olby: from Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA a Documentory History. Oregon State University website. Retrieved 06 June 2006.
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