47 Fun Facts About Rosalind Franklin

Which of Franklin's students took Photo 51, the famous X-ray picture of DNA?

Raymond Gosling: as Franklin prepared to leave King's, he gave the picture to Wilkins, his new supervisor.

An unpublished 1953 article on the DNA discovery, found in Franklin's papers, was written for which magazine?

Time: its London reporter wrote that the King's and Cambridge teams 'linked up, confirming each other's work from time to time'.

In a 1940 letter, Franklin chided her father for treating science as something apart from what?

Real life: in the same letter she told him that faith in this world was perfectly possible without faith in another.

What was the profession of Franklin's wealthy father, Ellis?

Merchant banker: some accounts say he opposed her going to Cambridge, but her biographers say he did not.

What was Franklin originally hired to investigate at King's, before Randall moved her onto DNA?

Proteins: Randall never told Maurice Wilkins what he had promised her, so the two soon clashed over their roles.

St Paul's Girls' School, which Franklin joined at 11, was unusual for teaching girls what?

Physics and chemistry: Franklin women were expected to go into community service, but at school she was already set on science.

Which composer, then music director at St Paul's Girls' School, noted Franklin's weak ear for music?

Gustav Holst: he wrote The Planets while teaching at the school, where he ran the music department for nearly 30 years.

Franklin's father asked her to give her university scholarship money to whom?

A deserving refugee student: the Franklins also took two Jewish children who had fled the Nazis into their own home.

At which Cambridge college did Franklin study chemistry from 1938?

Newnham: there she met the scientist Adrienne Weill, who became her mentor and later helped her land a research post.

In early 1953, Franklin's notes said DNA's structure would allow any sequence of which of its components?

Bases: she wrote that 'an infinite variety of nucleotide sequences' was possible, though she never worked out how the bases pair up.

During the Second World War, which volunteer role did Franklin take on?

Air raid warden: meanwhile she gave up her Cambridge fellowship to research coal for the war effort, work that earned her a PhD.

Franklin measured the porosity of coal using which gas to determine its density?

Helium: its tiny atoms reached pores that other fluids could not, so comparing the densities revealed fine constrictions inside coal.

Franklin's coal classification helped predict performance in fuels and in which wartime device?

Gas masks: she found that coal's pores act as molecular sieves, blocking substances by their molecular size.

In which city did Franklin master X-ray crystallography before she moved to King's College London?

Paris: she loved the lab's lively lunchtime debates and seriously considered never returning to England.

Franklin became expert at applying X-ray diffraction to which kind of substances?

Amorphous ones: that rare skill with messy, non-crystalline samples is why King's put her onto its DNA X-ray research.

Franklin's research on why some coals turn into graphite later aided which material?

Carbon fibre: she also identified carbons that refuse to turn into graphite on heating, and those became heat-proof glassy carbon for crucibles.

In his 1968 memoir, what did James Watson portray Franklin as not competent to do?

Interpret her own data: many scientists and reviewers protested his portrait of her, complaining that it was inaccurate.

Franklin's key innovation at King's was a camera chamber that controlled what?

Humidity: controlling it showed that earlier, fuzzy DNA pictures had muddled two different forms of the molecule.

Which letter did Franklin give the long, thin form of DNA she studied at King's?

B: in February 1953 she went back to her pictures of this form and began analysing them closely.

When Randall split the DNA work between Franklin and Wilkins, which did Franklin choose?

The A form: she expected its crystalline pictures to give more precise data, yet the famous Photo 51 shows the other form.

In July 1952, Franklin posted a mock funeral notice announcing the death of what?

The A-form helix: her data briefly argued against a helix in that form, though she later concluded both forms were two-chain helices.

In her November 1951 lecture, Franklin placed the phosphate groups where in the DNA structure?

Near the outside: Watson attended the talk, and he and Crick soon built a model with the phosphates in the middle.

What did Watson and Crick's director order after Franklin faulted their first model?

Stop the work: the head of the Cavendish ordered them to leave DNA to King's, and they kept off it for most of the next year.

Who gave Crick the MRC report containing Franklin's crystallographic calculations in February 1953?

Max Perutz: historians now argue that report mattered more to Watson and Crick's success than Photo 51 did.

After learning of Watson and Crick's model, what did Franklin do with her March 1953 draft?

Added that her data fit it: her paper then ran third in the same issue of Nature as Watson and Crick's.

Watson visited King's on 30 January 1953 carrying a preprint of whose incorrect DNA structure?

Linus Pauling: his triple-helix model repeated the very mistake Franklin had caught in Watson and Crick's first attempt.

In March 1953 Franklin left King's for which London college?

Birkbeck: it began as an institute for educating working men, and she found its atmosphere far friendlier than King's.

Which crystallographer, known for promoting women in the field, recruited Franklin in 1953?

J. D. Bernal: after she died, he wrote that her photographs were among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken.

Franklin showed that all particles of which pathogen were the same length, contradicting Norman Pirie?

Tobacco mosaic virus: she published the finding in Nature anyway, and her observation that the particles were uniform proved correct.

Franklin first noticed signs of her illness during a 1956 work trip to which country?

The United States: even while she underwent treatment back in London, her group turned out over a dozen papers in 1956 and 1957.

Franklin's team found that the RNA of the plant virus she studied most sits where?

Within its protein coat: a hole ran down the centre of the particle, so the RNA could not be a central wick and wound through the protein instead.

Franklin's virus models, first made from ping-pong balls and handlebar grips, were for which 1958 event?

Brussels World's Fair: it opened on 17 April 1958, the day after Franklin died, with her virus model on show.

Which body gave Franklin's 1957 polio grant, the largest her college had ever received?

The US National Institutes of Health: the grant secured her research group's future just as British funders were growing reluctant to back it.

Which choice in Franklin's final polio project raised safety concerns at her college?

Studying live virus: she went ahead anyway, but her rapidly failing health forced her to stop before the project was finished.

After Franklin's death her group showed the polio virus to have which symmetry?

Klug and Finch suggested all spherical viruses might share it, allowing 60 identical units.

Which nickname did James Watson's memoir use for Franklin, though even her friends called her Rosalind?

Rosy: the book's bad-tempered bluestocking who hoarded her data provoked her friend Anne Sayre to write a biography in rebuttal.

James Watson's 1968 memoir, which drew a critical portrait of Franklin, was titled what?

Aaron Klug's articles defending her contribution were written in response to it.

Franklin died in 1958 at the age of 37 from what?

Ovarian cancer: some suspect the long hours she spent adjusting samples in the X-ray beam played a part.

Franklin was buried in the family plot where?

Willesden Jewish Cemetery: her headstone praises her research on viruses, not DNA, as of lasting benefit to mankind.

In 2000, King's College London named what after both Franklin and Maurice Wilkins?

A building: the Franklin-Wilkins Building pairs two colleagues who were barely on speaking terms while they worked there.

Watson, Crick and Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for DNA's structure in which category?

Medicine: it was the prize in Physiology or Medicine, and in the laureates' Nobel speeches only Wilkins even spoke of Franklin's X-ray work.

In 2019 the European Space Agency named which vehicle after Franklin?

Its ExoMars rover: her name won a public naming contest for a rover built to search Mars for signs of life.

Which Oscar winner played Franklin on the London stage in 2015 in Anna Ziegler's play Photograph 51?

Nicole Kidman: it was her first London stage role since 1998, and in 2025 Natalie Portman was cast in the part for Tom Hooper's film.

A 2003 plaque at which Cambridge pub omitted Franklin's name, was graffitied, and was replaced in 2023?

The Eagle: the old plaque, '+Franklin' graffito and all, now sits in Cambridge's Whipple Museum of the History of Science.

How did Watson and Crick's 1953 Nature paper acknowledge Franklin's unpublished results?

A passing mention: they said only that the unpublished results of Wilkins, Franklin and co-workers had 'stimulated' them, yet Watson later called her contribution critical.

Which Franklin colleague wrote Nature articles in 1968 and 1974 setting out her part in the DNA discovery?

Aaron Klug: after Franklin died, he took over the leadership of her virus research group.

Which coin did Britain's Royal Mint issue in 2020 to mark what would have been Franklin's 100th birthday?

A 50p coin: its design shows a stylised Photo 51, the picture Wilkins later showed to Watson.