I was once asked to prepare a
short presentation (for a job interview) about a scientist I found fascinating.
As my title already indicates, I picked Rosalind Franklin. I think that talking
about the life of a (famous) scientist is not only a good way to bring a personal aspect into science, but also a great way to learn more about the
specific area and subject of the scientist.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get the
job, but I really enjoyed preparing the presentation. I feel very
passionate about this topic, so I thought I would put it to good use (or so I
hope) and transform the information into a blog article.
Rosalind Elsie Franklin studied physical chemistry in Cambridge
in the 1940s to become a biophysicist and x-ray crystallographer. In the early
20th century (and to some extent still nowadays), it was rather
unusually for women to a) work, and b) work in science, and c) be really
successful in what they were doing (working in a field dominated by men).
After her studies (and during war
time) she worked for the British Coal Utilisation Research Association. This
work also formed the basis of her PhD, which she was awarded in 1945 by the University
of Cambridge.
After several years of working in
a French Research Institute, she came back to England
(1951, Kings College, London),
with a newly acquired research technique, x-ray crystallography. With this technique
you can identify the location of atoms in a crystal, by looking at the image of
the crystal under an x-ray beam.
In England,
she joined Maurice Wilkins to work on DNA structure. By this time, DNA was
known to be the only substance capable of storing all the information needed to
create a living organism. What was not known was what the DNA molecule looked
like or how it worked.
Her time in this lab was quite
short, and it is said to have been one of her unhappiest times in her research
career. So when she left in 1953 to start working with the tobacco mosaic virus
(Birbeck University),
focussing on her work about DNA was probably the last thing on her mind.
This might have been a big
mistake, because it turned out, the work that she did on DNA, would one day
make history.
In 1953, James Watson and Francis
Crick published a (now really famous) paper in which they revealed that DNA was
made up of a double helix. Yet, they did not do a single experiment for their
research. In fact, their findings were based on a photograph, known as
photograph 51, which Franklin took
a year earlier with her assistant Raymond Gosling. And which Watson and Crick
got hold off without her knowledge or permission.
Neither Rosalind, Wilkins nor
Gosling were co-authors on that key paper, and her and Wilkins’ input was
merely mentioned by Watson and Crick in an acknowledgement. Rosalind and
Gosling, and Wilkins, did, however, publish two other papers, which appeared in
the same nature issue.
With their publication, Watson
and Crick had outrun everyone in the race to solving the mystery about the DNA
structure—a race that nobody but (probably) Watson and Crick knew was a race. There
is no evidence that Rosalind felt bitter about their achievement, nor that she knew
that Watson’s and Crick’s conclusions and paper were based on her photo and the
copy of a summary of her results she produced for a report.
Rosalind continued to work successfully
at Birbeck University
for the next 5 years until her death on April
16, 1958. She was only 37 when she died of ovarian cancer.
What I found so intriguing about
her life is that she not only was a successful scientist who published almost
40 scientific papers in such a short career time, but that her “posthumous life”
would reveal a lot of drama intrigues and scandals underneath the research on
DNA. Because the story doesn’t end with her death, it probably only started
with it!
Rosalind died without knowing what
impact her photograph would have. In 1962, Watson, Crick and Wilkins received
the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the double helix.
It still remains questionable if
Rosalind would have been nominated, should she still have been alive.
The known tensions between her,
Wilkins and Watson left (and still leave) a lot of room for speculation. Ever
since, there was much debate about whether Watson and Crick would have been
able to finish their hypothesis and model without Rosalind’s photograph (and
ideas) and about whether Rosalind was wronged. But as it is, Nobel prizes
cannot be awarded posthumously.
It is perhaps quite ironic
(and/or rightful) that Rosalind really rose to popular fame and into the public
eye in 1968, when Watson published his memoirs about the DNA discovery. The
dismissive and belittling picture he painted about “Rosy” caused an outcry
among women and scientist and catapulted Rosalind to fame.
In the same year (and following
years), Rosalind's colleague from Birbeck, Aaron Klug, published several papers
based on notes in Rosalind’s lab books that demonstrated how close she actually
was to discovering the structure of DNA herself. So had she written in her lab
books in early 1953, before the nature papers were published, that the
“structure of the DNA had two chains”.
Rosalind Franklin could never
witness the impact of her scientific contributions into the discovery of thedouble helix. But she was an impressive woman, who managed to succeed in
academia in a time where not many women received recognition. Her work at King’s was only a small part of
her career. In her short life, she received international recognition for her
important contributions in virology and carbonaceous solids, besides the study
of DNA, and was no doubt respected by many scientists.
J.D Bernal once said about her: “As a scientist,
Miss Franklin was distinguished by extreme clarity and perfection in everything
she undertook. Her photographs are among the most beautiful x-ray photographs
of any substance ever taken”.
Even Watson added the epilogue to a newer edition of the Double Helix:
Even Watson added the epilogue to a newer edition of the Double Helix:
“All of those people, should
they so desire, can indicate events and details they remember differently. But
there is one unfortunate exception. In 1958, Rosalind Franklin died at the
early age of thirty-seven. Since my initial impressions of her, both scientific
and personal (as recorded in the early pages of this book), were often wrong, I
want to say something here about her achievements. The X-ray work she did at
King's is increasingly regarded as superb. The sorting out of the A and B
forms, by itself, would have made her reputation; even better was her 1952
demonstration using Patterson superposition methods, that the phosphate groups
must be on the outside of the DNA molecule. Later, when she moved to Bernal's
lab, she took up work on tobacco mosaic virus and quickly extended our
qualitative ideas about helical construction into a precise quantitative
picture, definitely establishing the essential helical parameters locating the
ribonucleic chain halfway out from the central axis. Because I was then
teaching in the States, I did not see her as often as did Francis (Crick), to whom
she frequently came for advice or when she had done something very pretty, to
be sure he agreed with her reasoning. By then, all traces of our early
bickering were forgotten, and we both came to appreciate greatly her personal
honesty and generosity, realising years too late the struggles that the
intelligent woman faces to be accepted by a scientific world which often
regards women as mere diversions from serious thinking. Rosalind's exemplary
courage and integrity were apparent to all when, knowing she was mortally ill,
she did not complain but continued working on a high level until a few weeks
before her death.”
Further reads:
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| http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/KRBBJW |
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| http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/KRBBHK |
