![]() After learning that the rover had been named in honour of her aunt, Rosalind Franklin reached out to ESA, curious to learn more about the mission. Astronaut Tim Peake unveiled the name at the Airbus factory in Stevenage in the UK.įranklin’s family was touched by the worldwide recognition. The honour followed a public competition led by the UK Space Agency that drew nearly 36,000 responses from right across Europe. In 2019, ESA has honoured the life and work of this pioneering female scientist and named the ExoMars rover ‘Rosalind Franklin’. She died two years later at 37 years old, working almost to the very end of her life. She was on a trip to America when she had difficulty fastening her skirt over her swollen stomach – the first sign of an advanced ovarian cancer. Unfortunately, Dr Franklin did not live to see the results of her work. It is now acknowledged that her research was crucial to scientists’ determining the double helix structure which eventually led to the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. We regard her as the first structural biologist of viruses.”įranklin’s work went largely unrecognized for nearly 50 years. She was not an undiscovered gem in her time, but a really influential scientist for her pioneering work in viruses. “Dr Franklin produced the best double helix image of DNA strands with X-rays, and that transformed our world, leading to the biggest advance in biology in the past century – DNA technology. Jim Naismith, director of The Rosalind Franklin Institute, a national research centre for life sciences in the UK summarised: ![]() The image demonstrated the helical structure of DNA and together with related data was integral to the 1953 discovery and description of the double helix structure of DNA. It was at that time when her Photo 51 was taken, photo that revealed the yet unknown structure of the DNA molecule. ![]() In the early 1950, Dr Franklin worked at King’s College London on images of DNA molecules through more than 100 hours of photographic exposure. She became an expert in X-ray diffraction imaging applied to studying the physical chemistry of coals, and later revealing the hidden secrets of DNA, RNA and viruses. Devoted and determined, she followed her dream, graduating with a Natural Sciences degree from Cambridge University in 1941, and earning a PhD in physical chemistry in 1945 – at a time when few women were working as professional researchers. Rosalind Franklin showed an early passion for science. She also made enduring contributions to the study of coal, carbon, and graphite. Rosalind Franklin was a physical chemist and expert crystallographer who contributed to unraveling the double helix structure of our DNA. ImageĬredit: Henry Grant Collection, Museum of London. Dr Franklin at work in her laboratory, 1954.
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