In 1951, Franklin was recruited by Professor John Randall, director of a special biophysics unit at King's College in London. During her time in the unit she was known to have problems working with fellow DNA researcher Maurice Wilkins.

Wilkins was know for his indirect and somewhat slowly calculated research methods, while Rosalind Franklin worked much more quickly and intensely, and was know for her directly confrontational style. As much as a problem the different work styles posed, the work environment was made even worse by John Randall. While Randall had placed Franklin in charge of the DNA diffraction studies, he failed to communicate this to Maurice Wilkins who had previously been working on the project. The tension between the two caused by this miscommunication and difference in work styles led to a leak of research results to James Watson and Francis Crick, who were working on the same project for Cambridge University.

Wilkins, a friend of Watson and Crick, happened to show Watson one of Franklin's best DNA photographs. It was this photograph that provided enough information to put the Cambridge scientists ahead of the King's College contingent. Wilkins compounded the problem by also informing Watson and Crick of an internal King's Medical Research Council (KMRC) report which summarized Franklin's latest findings. Watson and Crick were then able to obtain a copy of that report from another colleague, Max Perutz. Less than two weeks after receiving copies of the data from Franklin's reports, Watson and Crick were able to begin building the backbone of the now-famous DNA double-helix.


Rosalind Franklin - Tobacco Mosaic Virus
By 1953 Franklin so unhappy with the working conditions at King's College that she left to do TMV (Tobacco Mosaic Virus) research with eminent biocrystallographer, Desmond Bernal, at Birkbeck College in London. During her first five years at Birkbeck, she published seventeen papers on TMV, five authored on her own and twelve completed in collaboration with the team she directed.

Franklin was able to prove that TMV’s peripheral-helically packaged protein component surrounded and embedded its linear strand of infectious RNA. This is believed to be the first example of structural virology.

In 1954 Franklin began a collaboration with Aaron Klug. In 1955 she had a paper published in the journal Nature, indicating that TMV virus particles were all of the same length. This finding was in direct contradiction to the ideas of the eminent virologist of the times, Norman Pirie. Franklin's observations, though, were ultimately proved correct.


Rosalind Franklin - Illness and Death
While on a work-related trip to the United States in mid-1956, Franklin began to suspect a serious problem with her health. In September of that year, surgery revealed that she had two abdominal tumors. While receiving treatment for these cancers, she continued her work and her group presented some thirteen additional papers on TMV in 1956 and 1957. At the same time her group obtained funding from the Public Health Service of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States to conduct research on the polio virus.

In March of 1958 Franklin fell severely ill and she died on April 16, 1958 in Chelsea, London. She was only 37 years old. The official cause of death was reported as bronchopneumonia, secondary carcinomatosis and carcinoma of the ovary. It has been posited that long-term exposure to X-ray radiation could have been a factor in her illness.


Rosalind Franklin - Posthumous Recognition
Although Franklin's scientific research provided the crucial experimental data that enabled James Watson and Francis Crick to solve the puzzle of DNA's structure, she received little to no credit for her work during her lifetime. Posthumously, however, her work eventually became recognized for it's groundbreaking contributions, as noted by her many posthumous recognitions noted below.

1968 - Neither Watson nor Crick mentioned her work in their Nobel Prize speeches, and it wasn't until James Watson published his book, The Double Helix, in 1968 that she was finally recognized for her achievements.

1975 - Publication of Rosalind Franklin and DNA, authored by Rosalind's friend Anna Sayre.

1982 - Iota Sigma Pi designated Franklin a National Honorary Member.

1987 - Franklin's part in the discovery of the nature of DNA was also memorialized in the 1987 TV Movie Life Story, starring Tim Pigott-Smith as Francis Crick, Alan Howard as Maurice Wilkins, Jeff Goldblum as James Watson, and Juliet Stevenson as Rosalind.

1992 - English Heritage placed a blue plaque on the house Rosalind Franklin grew up in.

1993 - King's College London renamed the Orchard Residence at their Hampstead Campus on Kidderpore Avenue Rosalind Franklin Hall.

1995 - Newnham College dedicated a residence in her name and put a bust of her in its garden.

1997 - Birkbeck, University of London School of Crystallography opened the Rosalind Franklin laboratory.

1998 - The National Portrait Gallery added Rosalind Franklin's next to those of Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins.

2000 - King's College London opened the Franklin-Wilkins Building in honour of Dr. Franklin's and Professor Wilkins's work at the college.

2001 - The U.S. National Cancer Institute established the Rosalind E. Franklin Award for Women in Science

2003 - The Royal Society established the Rosalind Franklin Award, for an outstanding contribution to any area of natural science, engineering or technology.

2004 - Finch University of Health Sciences/The Chicago Medical School, in Chicago, IL, USA, changed its name to Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.

2004 - University of Groningen in the Netherlands installed Rosalind Franklin fellowships to promote the hiring of young, promising, female researchers..

2008 - Columbia University awarded an Honorary Horwitz Prize to Rosalind Franklin, Ph.D., posthumously, "for her seminal contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA"