Melvyn Bragg
speaker
958 appearances
7 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 5d ago
Melvyn Bragg’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 4.
Appearances
Hello.
In nineteen fifty two Rosalind Franklin was at King's College London investigating the structure of DNA, creating images for analysis.
One of the images made for that work, Photograph 51, has become famous.
It provided information needed to deduce the structure of DNA, one of the great achievements of twentieth century science, which Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins later received the Nobel Prize.
But not Franklin.
who moved on from DNA structure to do pioneering research into coal and viruses.
And since her death, when she was only thirty seven, many have argued that she deserved greater recognition both for her role in the understanding of DNA and as a scientist more generally.
With me to discuss Rodland Franklin's life and work are Patricia Farrar, President of the British Society for the History of Science.
Patricia Farrah.
What was Rosalind Frankman's upbringing?
She went up to Cambridge in nineteen thirty eight to read natural sizes.
How
How unusual was that for a woman at that time?
She didn't get they weren't allowed to get degrees, they got diplomas, for instance.
Given that it w excuse me, given that it was unusual for a woman to study natural sciences at Cambridge, how did she come to want to study that?
Jim, Jim Naismith, after graduating she carried on research into cold and the war is on at that stage.
The war is about to start when she's graduated.
And her father, as I understand, is urging her to do war work, but she resisted him and stayed on the university and did a sort of w can you develop what you did there?
What effect did that have then?
This sounds very practical.
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