Rosalind Franklin
Biologist · 1920-1958 · Biology, stage 3: Meet the biologists
Produced the X-ray diffraction data that established the structure of DNA.
Overview
Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose diffraction images of DNA fibres, and the measurements she derived from them, showed that the molecule is helical, that the phosphate backbone lies on the outside, and gave the dimensions any correct model had to satisfy. Her image of the B form, known as Photo 51, and an unpublished report of her numerical results were shown to Watson and Crick without her knowledge and were used in building their 1953 model. She published her own analysis in the same issue of Nature and then moved to virus structure, where she established the arrangement of RNA and protein in tobacco mosaic virus. She died at thirty-seven, before the 1962 Nobel Prize, which is not awarded posthumously. Read her 1953 Nature paper alongside the Watson and Crick paper it appeared with.
Where to start reading
Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate 1953
Her paper with Raymond Gosling in Nature, presenting the diffraction evidence for the helical structure and the position of the backbone.
Part of
Sources
- Rosalind Franklin Wikipedia
- Photo 51 Wikipedia
- Discovery of DNA Double Helix: Watson and Crick Nature Education Scitable
