Rosalind Franklin

1920–1958

Scientist

Of all the people buried at Willesden Cemetery, the name of Rosalind Franklin is perhaps the best known. A chemist and x-ray crystallographer, she made remarkable scientific progress in understanding viruses and was credited with playing a key part in the discovery of the structure of DNA. Franklin’s renown came after her death when she was overlooked for a Nobel prize.

Franklin was working at King’s College, London, in 1951, when she took what became known as “Photograph 51”. This X-ray image of twisted strands was vital to scientists’ understanding of the building blocks of life. It seemed for the first time to provide proof of the double-helix shape of a DNA molecule.

Franklin died of ovarian cancer aged 37. The 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Francis Crick, James Watson of Cambridge and Franklin’s King’s College colleague Maurice Wilkins for their “discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material”. She was not credited for her role in that work.

Franklin’s leadership in science has since been acknowledged worldwide including with the naming after her of a robotic rover that Europe and Russia plan to send to Mars.

On Sunday 26th July we celebrated the centenary of Rosalind Franklin’s birthday with ‘Viruses and the Research Legacy of Rosalind Franklin’ a webinar with speakers Dr Patricia Fara and Professor James Naismith, hosted by Hester Abrams.