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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index F > Rosalind Franklin Quotes

Thumbnail of Rosalind Franklin (source)
Rosalind Franklin
(25 Jul 1920 - 16 Apr 1958)

English physical chemist and X-ray crystallographer.

Short biography of Rosalind Franklin >>

Science Quotes by Rosalind Franklin (6 quotes)

Conclusion: Big helix in several chains, phosphates on outside, phosphate-phosphate inter-helical bonds disrupted by water. Phosphate links available to proteins.
— Rosalind Franklin
Lecture Notes of Franklin. Headed 'Colloquium November 1951', the report is typewritten dated 7 Feb 1952, in A. Sayre, Rosalind Franklin and DNA (1975), 128.
Science quotes on:  |  DNA (46)  |  Molecular Structure (4)  |  Protein (23)

Science, for me, gives a partial explanation of life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment. Your theories are those which you and many other people find easiest and pleasantest to believe, but, so far as I can see, they have no foundation other than they lead to a pleasant view of life ... I agree that faith is essential to success in life ... but I do not accept your definition of faith, i.e. belief in life after death. In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining ... I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world.
— Rosalind Franklin
Letter (summer 1940?). In Edward Shils and Carmen Blacker, Cambridge Women: Twelve Portraits (1996), 272.
Science quotes on:  |  Experience (115)  |  Experiment (346)  |  Fact (277)  |  Faith (56)  |  Life (379)  |  Pleasantness (3)  |  Science And Religion (129)  |  Success (93)  |  Theory (319)

The results suggest a helical structure (which must be very closely packed) containing probably 2, 3 or 4 coaxial nucleic acid chains per helical unit and having the phosphate groups near the outside.
— Rosalind Franklin
Official Report, submitted in Feb 1952. In A. Klug, 'Rosalind Franklin and the Discovery of the Structure of DNA', Nature 1968, 219, 843.
Science quotes on:  |  DNA (46)  |  Molecular Structure (4)

We wish to discuss a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid. (D.N.A.). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biologic interest.
— Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin and R. G. Gosling, 'Molecular Structures of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid', Nature, 1953, 171, 737.
Science quotes on:  |  DNA (46)  |  Molecular Structure (4)

While the biological properties of deoxypentose nucleic acid suggest a molecular structure containing great complexity, X-ray diffraction studies described here... show the basic molecular configuration has great simplicity.
— Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin and R. G. Gosling, 'Molecular Structures of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid', Nature, 1953, 171, 741.
Science quotes on:  |  Molecular Structure (4)

You look at science (or at least talk of it) as some sort of demoralising invention of man, something apart from real life, and which must be cautiously guarded and kept separate from everyday existence. But science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment.
— Rosalind Franklin
Letter to Ellis Franklin, no date, possibly summer 1940 whilst Rosalind was an undergraduate at Cambridge. Cited in Brenda Maddox, The Dark Lady of DNA (2002), 60-1.
Science quotes on:  |  Experience (115)  |  Experiment (346)  |  Fact (277)  |  Life (379)  |  Science (754)



Quotes by others about Rosalind Franklin (5)

Her [Rosalind Franklin's] photographs are among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken.
— Nature Journal
Obituary of Rosalind Franklin, Nature, 1958, 182, 154.
Science quotes on:  |  X-ray Diffraction (2)

She would have solved it, but it would have come out in stages. For the feminists, however, she has become a doomed heroine, and they have seized upon her as an icon, which is not, of course, her fault. Rosalind was not a feminist in the ordinary sense, but she was determined to be treated equally like anybody else.
— Sir Aaron Klug
'Rosalind Franklin and the Discovery of the Structure of DNA'. Cited in Brenda Maddox, The Dark Lady of DNA (2002), 326.

She discovered in a series of beautifully executed researches the fundamental distinction between carbons that turned on heating into graphite and those that did not. Further she related this difference to the chemical constitution of the molecules from which carbon was made. She was already a recognized authority in industrial physico-chemistry when she chose to abandon this work in favour of the far more difficult and more exciting fields of biophysics.
— John Desmond Bernal
Comment in The Times, 19 Apr 1958, shortly after Franklin's death. In Jenifer Glynn, 'Rosalind Franklin', in E. Shils and C. Blacker (eds.), Cambridge Women: Twelve Portraits (1996), 206.
Science quotes on:  |  Carbon (23)

Our dark lady is leaving us next week.
— Maurice Wilkins
Letter from Maurice Wilkins to Francis Crick, 7 Mar 1953. Cited in Brenda Maddox, The Dark Lady of DNA (2002), xvii.

I think she [Rosalind Franklin] was a good experimentalist but certainly not of the first rank. She was simply not in the same class as Eigen or Bragg or Pauling, nor was she as good as Dorothy Hodgkin. She did not even select DNA to study. It was given to her. Her theoretical crystallography was very average.
— Francis Crick
Letter to Charlotte Friend (18 Sep 1979). In Francis Harry Compton Crick Papers, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine.
Science quotes on:  |  Average (14)  |  Sir Lawrence Bragg (5)  |  Class (26)  |  Crystallography (3)  |  DNA (46)  |  Manfred Eigen (2)  |  Experimentalist (6)  |  First (28)  |  Good (63)  |  Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (6)  |  Linus Pauling (33)  |  Rank (11)  |  Study (117)  |  Theoretical (2)


See also:
  • todayinsci icon 25 Jul - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Franklin's birth.
  • book icon Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, by Brenda Maddox. - book suggestion.
  • booklist icon Booklist for Rosalind Franklin.


Carl Sagan Thumbnail At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. -- Carl Sagan

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