ROSALIND FRANKLIN BIOGRAPHY

Many people recall that the structure of the DNA molecule has the shape of a double helix. Some may even recall
the names of the scientists who won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for modeling the structure of the molecule,
and explaining how the shape lends itself to replication. James Watson and Francis Crick shared the Nobel Prize with
Maurice Wilkins, but many people feel that much of the credit for this world-shaking achievement should rightfully
go to someone who was absent from that stage, a woman named Rosalind Franklin.

Rosalind Franklin Facts

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (July 25, 1920 to April 16, 1958) was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer.
Her work contributed to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid),
RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite.

Interesting Rosalind Franklin Facts:

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in Notting Hill, London, to a wealthy Jewish family.
She attended private schools and matriculated at St Paul's Girls' School.
She was a gifted student and excelled in science, Latin, and sports.
She matriculated in 1938 and earned six distinctions and a scholarship to college.
In 1941 she graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied the Natural Sciences
Tripos.
She received a research fellowship to the University of Cambridge physical chemistry laboratory.
Her mentor there was Ronald Norrish, the winner of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
In 1945 she earned her PhD with a thesis titled, The physical chemistry of solid organic colloids with
special reference to coal.
In 1947 she did postdoctoral work in Paris where she continued improving her skills in X-ray
crystallography.
In 1950 she received a fellowship to work at King's College, London and in 1951 she began work as a
research associate in the Medical Research Council's Biophysics Unit.
Her X-ray diffraction images of the DNA molecule were key to the double helix model of DNA discovered
by James Watson and Francis Crick.
In 1953 she moved to Birkbeck College where she was funded by the Agricultural Research Council.
She helped her former assistant, Raymond Gosling, finish his thesis and they jointly published a paper
on the helical structure of the A form of DNA in the July issue of Nature.
In 1956 she and her PhD student, Kenneth Holmes, published their findings that the covering of the
tobacco mosaic virus was a helix.
During a trip to the US in 1956 that she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
She continued working throughout the following two years, despite having three operations and
experimental chemotherapy. She experienced a 10-month remission and worked up until several weeks
before her death on April 16, 1958, at the age of 37.

WRITING. A BIOGRAPHY.

Paragraph 1. Introduction. Paragraph 3. Professional career

Paragraph 2. Early life and education. Paragraph 4. Most famous for.