Rosalind Elsie Franklin - The Early Years

Rosalind Franklin's bright scientific star burned brightly but quickly. You would be hard-pressed to find another female scientist whose life and work attracted so much controversy. Responsible in large part for the extensive research that led to the description and understanding of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, she was never recognized for this accomplishment during her short life.

An accomplished scientist, Franklin also conducted extensive research on coal and carbon, the tobacco mosaic virus, and preliminary research on the polio virus.


Rosalind Elsie Franklin - Early Life and Education
Born on July 15, 1920, in London, England, Rosalind Elsie Franklin was the second of five children born to Ellis and Muriel (Waley) Franklin. Rosalind's parents were both very educated and socially conscious. The family wealth came from Ellis' inheritance of his family's merchant bank.

Rosalind was unique as a young girl of the times in that she was considered to be quite assertive and creative. She shunned common "girl" playthings, like dolls, in preference to create items, draw, take photographs and read. Later in life, her artistry and machinist skills helped her sketch and build her own molecular models and equipment.

When she became a student at St. Paul's Girls' School, one of the only girls schools in Britain with classes in physics and chemistry, and she became fascinated with both.

Against her family's wishes, Rosalind decided to become a scientist, she entered Newnham College in Cambridge in 1938 and graduated with a natural science degree, with a specialty in chemistry, in 1941.


Rosalind Elsie Franklin - Early Scientific Work
From 1942 to 1946, she did war-related work for BCURA - the British Coal Utilization Research Association. This work led to the earning of her Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Cambridge in 1945.

Rosalind began working with Jacques Méring at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l’État in 1947, where she became proficient at applying X-ray diffraction techniques to imperfectly crystalline matter like coal. It was this skill that was responsible for her being later recruited to work on DNA fibers. She maintained her interest in coal research throughout her professional career and almost annually published a scientific paper on the structure of carbons.

Under pressure from her family to return home, Rosalind returned to England in 1951. Professor John Randall, director of a special biophysics unit at King’s College, London, recruited Rosalind to work in his laboratory. It was at Randall's laboratory that she was first given the responsibility for working on the DNA project.


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