Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 - 16 April 1958) was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, her contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely recognised posthumously. Born to a prominent British Jewish family, Franklin was educated at a private day school at Norland Place in West London, Lindores School for Young Ladies in Sussex, and St Paul's Girls' School, London. Then she studied the Natural Sciences Tripos at Newnham College, Cambridge, from which she graduated in 1941.

Upon the completion of their model, Crick and Watson had invited Wilkins to be a co-author of their paper describing the structure. Wilkins turned down this offer, as he had taken no part in building the model. He later expressed regret that greater discussion of co-authorship had not taken place as this might have helped to clarify the contribution the work at King's had made to the discovery. There is no doubt that Franklin's experimental data were used by Crick and Watson to build their model of DNA in 1953. Some, including Maddox, have explained this citation omission by suggesting that it may be a question of circumstance, because it would have been very difficult to cite the unpublished work from the MRC report they had seen.  Indeed, a clear timely acknowledgment would have been awkward, given the unorthodox manner in which data were transferred from King's to Cambridge. However, methods were available. Watson and Crick could have cited the MRC report as a personal communication or else cited the Acta articles in press, or most easily, the third Nature paper that they knew was in press. One of the most important accomplishments of Maddox's widely acclaimed biography is that Maddox made a well-received case for inadequate acknowledgement. "Such acknowledgement as they gave her was very muted and always coupled with the name of Wilkins".  Fifteen years after the fact, the first clear recitation of Franklin's contribution appeared as it permeated Watson's account, The Double Helix, although it was buried under descriptions of Watson's (often quite negative) regard towards Franklin during the period of their work on DNA. This attitude is epitomized in the confrontation between Watson and Franklin over a preprint of Pauling's mistaken DNA manuscript. Watson's words impelled Sayre to write her rebuttal, in which the entire chapter nine, "Winner Take All" has the structure of a legal brief dissecting and analyzing the topic of acknowledgement.  Sayre's early analysis was often ignored because of perceived feminist overtones in her book. Watson and Crick did not cite the X-ray diffraction work of Wilkins and Franklin in their original paper, though they admit having "been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr. M. H. F. Wilkins, Dr. R. E. Franklin and their co-workers at King's College, London". In fact, Watson and Crick cited no experimental data at all in support of their model. Franklin and Gosling's publication of the DNA X-ray image, in the same issue of Nature, served as the principal evidence:  Thus our general ideas are not inconsistent with the model proposed by Watson and Crick in the preceding communication.

Ask a question about this article.
How did her work contribute?