Archive: Rosalind Franklin
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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Moikka. Oliko toisun Jail-inusälyukko helppo asentaa?
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This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello! Today's summer selection from the In Our Time Archive considers the life and work of Rosalind Franklin. A chemist and X-ray crystallographer, for many years she was overshadowed by male scientists. It's widely thought that her key role in revealing the structure and functionality of DNA was underplayed for decades. The challenges which women faced in higher education when she started her degree in natural sciences at Cambridge in the late thirties were significant.
She was the outstanding student of her year, gaining a first and publishing pathbreaking papers, but by dint of her sex, Franklin was not awarded a degree but a mere diploma. While working on X-ray crystallography at King's College, she found her work blighted by overbearing male supervisors who would seek to take credit for her work. But together with one man, her student Raymond Gosling, who recognized her genius, she was responsible for Photo fifty one, an image which Crick and Watson saw as the proof they needed to confirm their thinking about DNA. When the Nobel Committee announced Crick and Watson as winners of the Prize for Medicine in nineteen sixty two, There was no mention of Franklin, but
I hope this episode of In Our Time goes a little way to giving Franklin the recognition she deserves. Enjoy listening.
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. Jim Naismith, interim leader of the Roslyn Franklin Institute, director of the research complex at Howell and Professor at the University of Oxford, and Judith Howard, Professor of Chemistry at Durham University. Patricia Farrah. What was Rosalind Frankman's upbringing?
Uh her upbringing I think was very important for the rest of her life for two main reasons. Firstly, she was very, very close to her family, and we know a lot about her childhood, about her relationships with her family, because whenever she was away from home she wrote them very long, very eloquent, very intimate letters, uh which are absolutely marvellous to read nowadays. So she had uh three brothers, one sister. She was brought up in a very affluent, not wealthy, but very affluent family in London, in Nottinghill Gate. There were lots of other family members dotted around quite nearby, so it was a very, very large, close knit family. She loved them a lot. The only thing she ever resented, or the main thing she ever resented against her parents, because everybody resents their parents from time to time, but the main thing was that when she was about nine or ten, for the benefit of her health, she was sent away for a couple of years to a boarding school near the coast.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–18:28
2
What was Rosalind Franklin’s early life and family background?
18:28–26:28
3
How did gender barriers at Cambridge shape Franklin’s education and career?
26:28–34:15
4
Why did Franklin choose to study natural sciences and what drove her passion for research?
34:15–37:36
5
What were Franklin’s groundbreaking contributions to coal research during WWII?
37:36–47:22
6
How did Franklin use X‑ray diffraction to study complex materials like coal and viruses?
47:22–54:31