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Rosalind Franklin
(25 Jul 1920 - 16 Apr 1958)
English physical chemist and X-ray crystallographer.
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Science Quotes by Rosalind Franklin (5)
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.
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.
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.
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.
See also: | 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.
Quotes by others about Rosalind Franklin (4)
Her [Rosalind Franklin's] photographs are among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken.
Obituary of Rosalind Franklin, Nature, 1958, 182, 154.
See also: | 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.
'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.
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.
See also: | Carbon (11)
Our dark lady is leaving us next week.
Letter from Maurice Wilkins to Francis Crick, 7 Mar 1953. Cited in Brenda Maddox, The Dark Lady of DNA (2002), xvii.
