Rosalind Franklin - Wonderful Woman No. 69

Rosalind Franklin - 1920–1958
British Physicist and Crystallographer

Added to the album by Gavin, a wonderful man

Science is something that I have real faith and interest in. I am amazed at what we know about the universe, the planets, our own environment and our own bodies. It fascinates me how discoveries are made. I do not always understand what I read when it is science related, but I try to and I want to. Science in itself is a very wonderful topic... fantastic then when a female scientist appears in the album.

I have written in previous entries about women whose parents did not believe in the education of young ladies (e.g. Jessica Mitford - Wonderful Woman No. 15 http://iamawonderfulwoman.blogspot.com/2012/01/jessica-mitford-wonderful-woman-no-14.html) and of women who suffered sexism throughout their working lives (e.g. The Dagenham Four - Wonderful Women No. 49 Collectively http://iamawonderfulwoman.blogspot.com/2012/02/dagenham-four-wonderful-women-no-49.html), Rosalind Franklin suffered both.

Her family was well-to-do and had a tradition of public service and philanthropy, her father disapproved of university education for women. He refused to pay. An aunt stepped in and said Franklin should go to school, and she would pay for it.
A Science Odyssey via www.pbs.org

Rosalind was one of a very few women to study sciences at Cambridge University.

Early in her career, Rosalind became an expert in X-ray diffraction techniques. She was dedicated to collecting, analysing and testing data. It is now known that it was one of Rosalind's X-ray diffraction photographs that lead to the discovery of the structure of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid), the individual genetic identity of every living thing. She made an important contribution to the understanding of DNA, though her personal efforts were over-looked by her colleagues and contemporaries at the time (largely due to her sex).

Rosalind obtained a far higher quality photo of DNA than anybody had achieved before and noticed that DNA changed its form when it became wet.
Stephen Franklin, Nephew

Throughout her time conducting research into DNA, Rosalind was subject to fierce and institutionalised sexism. Women of the faculty where not even permitted to each lunch in the same hall as the other professors and researchers of the university.

Later in her career, Rosalind went on to conduct vital studies on a number of viruses, including polio.

Rosalind died before the Nobel Prize nomination for the Cambridge study group's DNA discoveries was made, the rules of the prize forbid the deceased from being honoured, the prize was awarded to her colleagues; Crick, Watson, and Wilkins in 1962. She has though, received many posthumous recognitions, including a Royal Society Award in her name, a number of university buildings baring her name and a her picture being placed in the National Portrait Gallery.

A woman who made a wonderfully significant contribution to the world through science and one who overcame the restrictions of social expectation and inherent sexism, Rosalind is a prefect example of how wonderful women can be.

Science, for me, gives a partial explanation of life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment. Your theories are those which you and many other people find easiest and pleasantest to believe, but, so far as I can see, they have no foundation other than they lead to a pleasant view of life.
Rosalind Franklin