Rosalind Franklin: biography, years of life, contribution to science. Forgotten Lady of DNA

Rosalind Elsie Franklin is a brilliant British chemist whose x-ray studies provided a key approach to the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid and quantitatively confirmed the Watson-Crick model. She also found that DNA molecules exist in more than one form.

Rosalind Franklin: short biography, photo

Rosalind was born in London on July 25, 1920, the second of five children of a famous Anglo-Jewish family. Her father, Ellis Franklin, was a partner at the Keizer bank, one of the largest family businesses (the other was the publishing house Rutledge and Kegan Paul). He and his wife Muriel took an active part in charitable and other public affairs. Rosalind Franklin (photo in the article below) studied at St. Paul's School for Girls, which prepared graduates for a future career, and not just for marriage. She easily received math and science, as well as foreign languages (she ultimately mastered French, Italian and German). Unlike many polyglots, she was deprived of musical ear. Gustav Holst, the music director of St. Paul's school, once observed that Rosalind's singing had improved almost to the point of falling into tone. Franklin's family often rested in hiking, and tourism remained one of her lifelong hobbies, along with foreign trips.

Study in Cambridge

According to her mother, all her life, Rosalind knew exactly where she was going, and at sixteen she chose science as her subject. Not wanting another year to prepare for college, in 1938 she left school to enroll in Newnham, one of the two women's colleges of Cambridge University. Her father did not, as some sources claim, resist her in this, although he could pick up her more traditional course. In Cambridge, Franklin specialized in physical chemistry. Her student years partly fell in the Second World War. Many teachers were then involved in military research. Some emigrants (for example, biochemist Max Perutz) were detained as foreigners. In one letter, Franklin noted that "virtually all of Cavendish has disappeared; Biochemistry was almost completely read by the Germans and could not survive. "

Assistance to the front

In 1941, Rosalind Franklin received a bachelor's degree, a scholarship for one more year and a grant from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. She spent this time in the laboratory of Norrisch, the famous pioneer of photochemistry. In 1942, when the war was still going on, Franklin had to decide whether she should engage in traditional military work or conduct research in an area relevant to the needs of wartime with the prospect of a doctorate. She chose the latter and in the summer began to cooperate with the newly organized British Coal Research Association (BCURA).

Rosalind Franklin: biography of the scientist

Over the next four years, Franklin worked on finding out the microstructure of various coals and carbons in order to explain why some of them are more permeable to water, gases and solvents, and how heating and carbonization affect it. In her study, she showed that the pores of coal at the molecular level have thin constrictions, which increase with heating and vary with the carbon content. They act as "molecular sieves", sequentially blocking the penetration of substances, depending on the molecular size. Rosalind Franklin was the first to identify and measure these microstructures. Her fundamental work allowed us to classify the coals and predict their effectiveness with a high degree of accuracy. Collaboration of Franklin with BCURA provided her a doctoral dissertation. She received her doctorate in Cambridge in 1945 and wrote five scientific papers.

Moving to France

After the war, Rosalind Franklin started looking for another job. She received a post in the Paris laboratory of Jacques Mehring. Here she learned how to analyze coal using X-ray analysis, and also got to know the technique closely. Her work with a detailed description of the structure of graphitizing and non-graphitizing carbons helped to form the basis for the development of carbon fibers and new heat resistant materials and brought her international fame among coal chemists. She was enjoying the collegial professional culture of the Central Laboratory and found many friends there.

Return to England

Although she was very happy in France, in 1949 Rosalind Franklin began to look for work in her homeland. Her friend Charles Colson, a theoretical chemist, invited her to try "X-ray diffraction methods for studying" large biological molecules. In 1950, she was awarded a three-year scholarship by Turner and Newell to work in the John Randall Department of Biophysics at King's College London. Randall planned that Franklin would create a department of crystallography and analyze proteins. However, at the suggestion of assistant laboratory chief Maurice Wilkins, Randall asked her to do DNA research. Wilkins only began to work with the X-ray diffraction of some unusually good samples of the molecules of the genetic code. He expected that they would cooperate with Franklin, but she did not say so.

Snapshot of DNA

Studies of deoxyribonucleic acid were studied only by her and the graduate student Raymond Gosling. Her relationship with Wilkins suffered from a misunderstanding (and perhaps from Franklin's dissatisfaction with the collegial culture of the university). Working with Gosling, Rosalind received more and more distinct X-ray photographs of DNA and quickly discovered that the wet and dry forms produced completely different images. The moist form showed a spiral structure, from the outside of which were the phosphates of the ribose chain. Her mathematical analysis of the diffraction in dry form, however, did not reveal such a structure, and she spent more than a year trying to resolve the disagreements. By early 1953, she came to the conclusion that both forms had two spirals.

Forgetful Laureates

Meanwhile, at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, Francis Crick and James Watson worked on a theoretical DNA model. Not staying in close contact with Franklin, in January 1953 they drew important conclusions about the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid from one of the X-ray images that Wilkins showed them, as well as a summary of its unpublished articles submitted to the Medical Research Council. Watson and Creek did not tell her that they saw her materials, and did not recognize her participation in their work when she published her famous report in April. Later, Creek admitted that in the spring of 1953, Franklin was two steps away from realizing the correct structure of DNA.

Investigation of viruses

By that time, Franklin had agreed to transfer her scholarship to Bernal's Crystallography Laboratory at Berkbek College, where she turned her attention to the structure of plant viruses (in particular, tobacco mosaic). Rosalind made their exact X-rays, working with a group of scientists, including the future Nobel Prize winner Aaron Klug. Her analysis of the diffractograms showed, among other things, that the genetic material (RNA) of the virus was embedded in its inner protective protein envelope. This work included collaboration with many researchers, especially in the US. Franklin made two long trips in 1954 and 1956 and created a network of contacts throughout the country, including Robley Williams, Barry Commoner and Wendell Stanley. Her experience in this field was recognized by the Royal Institute in 1956 when his director asked her to build large-scale models of rod-shaped and spherical viruses for the 1958 World Science Exhibition in Brussels.

Disease, death and heritage

In the autumn of 1956 Franklin was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. During the next 18 months she underwent surgery and underwent other methods of treatment. She had several periods of remission, during which she continued working in her laboratory and was looking for funding for her research team. Rosalind Franklin, The Forgotten Lady of DNA, died in London on April 16, 1958.

Throughout her 16-year career, she has published 19 scientific articles on carbon and carbon, 5 on DNA and 21 on viruses. In recent years, she has received many invitations to speak at conferences around the world. It is likely that work on viruses could finally bring a well-deserved reward and professional recognition to Rosalind Franklin, whose illness and death prevented it.

Role in the discovery of the structure of DNA

Franklin's scientific merits both in coal chemistry and in the study of the structure of viruses were significant. Her contemporaries recognized this during her life and after her death. But the most attention of the public was caused by its role in the discovery of the structure of DNA. Creek, Watson and Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the work on the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid. Then no one remembered Rosalind.

Her work on DNA, perhaps, would have gone unnoticed had Watson not ridiculed her in her memoirs of 1968, published under the title "Double Spiral". There he presented "interesting facts" about Rosalind Franklin, portrayed under the name of Rosie. He described her as a rough, impudent woman - a "blue stocking," who jealously guarded her data from colleagues, even if she could not interpret them. His book turned out to be very popular, although many of them, including Creek, Wilkins and Linus Pauling, were outraged by such treatment as most reviewers.

In 1975, a friend of Rosalind Ann Seir published a biography containing an angry refutation of Watson's statements, and Franklin's role in discovering the structure of DNA became more known. A lot of articles and documentaries tried to determine the extent of her participation in the "double-helix race", often portraying her as a feminist martyr, deprived of her Nobel Prize by misogynist colleagues and her early death. However, her second biographer Brenda Maddox noted that this is also a caricature that unjustly conceals Rosalind Franklin herself, the contribution to science of an outstanding chemist and her brilliant scientific career.