Women’s History Month: Honoring Rosalind Franklin

The field of biotechnology has been transformed in countless ways by the contributions of women scientists, yet many of these remarkable women remain unsung heroes. In this blog post, we will honor one of these women, Rosalind Franklin, whose pioneering work in X-ray crystallography was integral to the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work played a pivotal role in the discovery of the structure of DNA. She was born in London in 1920 and received her PhD in physical chemistry from Cambridge University in 1945. After completing her PhD, she worked as a research associate in a number of prestigious institutions, including King's College London, where she carried out much of the groundbreaking work on DNA.

At King's College London, Franklin worked alongside Maurice Wilkins, who was also studying the structure of DNA using X-ray crystallography. Although Franklin and Wilkins were officially colleagues, their working relationship was often strained, with each of them pursuing their own separate lines of research on DNA without fully collaborating with the other.

Despite these challenges, Franklin's work in X-ray crystallography was pivotal to the discovery of the structure of DNA. In 1952, she produced an X-ray diffraction image of DNA that came to be known as Photograph 51. This image was a crucial piece of evidence that helped James Watson and Francis Crick to deduce the double helix structure of DNA, which they published in a landmark paper in Nature in 1953.

Despite the crucial role that Franklin's work played in the discovery of the structure of DNA, she did not receive the recognition she deserved during her lifetime. Tragically, she died of ovarian cancer in 1958, just a few years after the discovery of DNA's structure. It was only later, through the publication of Watson's book The Double Helix, that the wider scientific community became aware of the extent of Franklin's contributions.

Today, Rosalind Franklin's legacy lives on in the countless scientists who have built upon her work in the field of biotechnology. Her pioneering use of X-ray crystallography to study the structure of molecules remains a fundamental technique in the field, and her dedication to rigorous scientific inquiry is an inspiration to all who follow in her footsteps.

There are countless remarkable women in biotech who have not received the recognition they deserve. Rosalind Franklin's contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA are a shining example of this, and it is important that we honor her legacy and continue to highlight the contributions of women scientists in biotechnology and beyond.