60 Fun Facts About Rosalind Franklin

The famous DNA X-ray image Photo 51 was actually taken by which of Franklin's students?

He had been Wilkins's graduate student until Randall reassigned him to Franklin.

Who showed Photo 51 to James Watson without Franklin's permission?

Watson had just been chased out of Franklin's lab after suggesting she could not interpret her own data.

Franklin was born in 1920 in which London district?

The family was affluent, influential and Jewish; her great-uncle Herbert Samuel had been Home Secretary.

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

He also taught electricity, magnetism and the history of the Great War at the Working Men's College.

Franklin's great-uncle Herbert Samuel was the first practising Jew to serve in what?

He was Home Secretary in 1916; her aunt Mamie was a suffrage campaigner and London County Councillor.

Franklin's aunt called the six-year-old 'alarmingly clever' for spending all her time doing what?

'And invariably gets her sums right,' the aunt added.

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

She excelled in science, Latin and sport, and became fluent in French.

Which composer, the school's music director, wondered whether Franklin might have hearing problems?

He wondered whether tonsillitis might be to blame.

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

Her parents helped settle Jewish refugees from the Nazis and took two Kindertransport children into their home.

At which Cambridge college did Franklin study chemistry from 1938?

The college later named a graduate residence after her and put her bust in its garden.

Franklin left Cambridge in 1941 with which grade of honours, since women could not then receive actual degrees?

Cambridge only began giving women titular BA and MA degrees in 1947, retroactively.

Franklin's Cambridge PhD, awarded in 1945, grew out of her wartime research on what?

She joked she was 'a physical chemist who knows very little physical chemistry, but quite a lot about the holes in coal'.

During the war Franklin volunteered in which civil defence role with her cousin Irene?

They shared a house in Putney and patrolled during raids to check on residents.

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

Her work on the fine constrictions in coal's pores helped predict its performance in fuel and gas masks.

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

The thesis was titled The physical chemistry of solid organic colloids with special reference to coal.

In Paris from 1947 Franklin learned X-ray crystallography under which researcher?

He taught her to apply diffraction to amorphous substances such as rayon and coal.

In Paris Franklin became expert at applying X-ray diffraction to what kind of substances?

Most crystallographers worked on regular crystals; she worked on carbon and rayon.

Franklin coined the terms 'graphitising' and 'non-graphitising' for forms of what?

The work is still part of the mainstream physics and chemistry of carbon.

Franklin joined King's College London in 1951 in the MRC Biophysics Unit directed by whom?

He redirected her from proteins to DNA before she even arrived, without telling Wilkins.

The purified 'Signer DNA' used at King's had been prepared from which calf tissue?

Rudolf Signer of Berne handed it out freely at a Faraday Society meeting in 1950.

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

Saturated salt solutions did the job, and her images soon outclassed Wilkins's.

Franklin found DNA existed in two forms. Which letter did she give the 'wet' form?

Above 75 per cent humidity the fibre was long and thin; dry, it was short and fat.

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

It was the data-rich crystalline form; Wilkins took the B form.

In July 1952 Franklin and Gosling circulated a mock funeral notice announcing the death of what?

It was a joke at the expense of Wilkins, who insisted both forms were helical, and asked him to speak in memory of the late helix.

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

Watson attended, failed to grasp it, and helped build a model with the phosphates inside.

Watson and Crick's flawed first model, built after Franklin's 1951 lecture, had how many strands?

Franklin pointed out that its central phosphate core could not be right, and the pair dropped DNA for a year.

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

The report confirmed the 34-angstrom repeat and the C2 symmetry that told Crick the strands ran in opposite directions.

Franklin's two A-DNA papers reached Acta Crystallographica on 6 March 1953, the day before what?

She had certainly written them before she knew anything of the Cambridge work.

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

Franklin was unimpressed; Watson backed out of her lab straight into Wilkins.

Shown the Watson-Crick model, Franklin said 'It's very pretty, but how are they going to' what?

As an experimentalist she distrusted model-building until the data demanded it.

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

Randall insisted all DNA work stay at King's, so she turned to viruses.

Franklin described her 1953 move as going 'from a palace to the' what?

'But pleasanter all the same,' she added; the Pharmacy department upstairs once flooded her lab.

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

He called her DNA pictures 'amongst 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?

Her observation proved correct, and Pirie's group funded her anyway.

Which member of Franklin's virus team continued her work and won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?

Many think she would have shared it had she lived.

Franklin and Donald Caspar showed in 1956 that the RNA in her favourite plant virus is wound where?

Caspar disliked writing, so Franklin wrote his paper as well as her own.

Franklin's virus model for the 1958 Brussels fair was built from table tennis balls and what?

The fair opened on 17 April 1958, the day after she died.

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

It was worth £10,000 over three years.

For safety, Franklin's live polio virus was stored at which institution during the research?

Bernal arranged it after colleagues balked at live virus in Torrington Square.

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.

As a child, Franklin questioned God's existence with the remark 'how do you know He isn't' what?

She was an agnostic all her life but remained, she said, 'always consciously a Jew'.

Which nickname, used behind her back at King's, did Franklin flatly refuse: 'Most definitely not' what?

She had a great-aunt of that name; her family called her Ros.

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?

Exposure to X-rays is sometimes suggested as a factor.

Franklin's will left her principal beneficiary, a colleague, £3,000 and what?

Her nurse got £250 and the rest went to charity.

Franklin was buried in the family plot where?

Historic England listed the tomb at Grade II in 2017.

Franklin's tombstone says her research and discoveries on what 'remain of lasting benefit to mankind'?

In her lifetime it was the virus and coal work that won recognition.

The Nobel rule barring posthumous awards, which ruled Franklin out, stood until which year?

She was never nominated in her lifetime; the 1962 prize went to Crick, Watson and Wilkins.

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

A 50p coin with a stylised Photo 51 followed for her centenary in 2020.

Nicole Kidman played Franklin in London in 2015 in which Anna Ziegler play?

Natalie Portman took the role in Tom Hooper's film of the play, begun in 2025.

Who played Franklin in the 1987 TV film Life Story, opposite Jeff Goldblum's Watson?

The film portrayed her as stern but made clear how much of her work Watson and Crick used.

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

It was where Crick announced in 1953 that they had 'found the secret of life'.

Watson and Crick's 1953 Nature paper acknowledged Franklin's contribution only in what form?

The paper cited no experimental data at all; the King's papers in the same issue supplied it.

During a 1946 trek in which mountains did Franklin slip off a slope and nearly lose her life?

She wrote home anyway that she could 'wander happily in France forever'.

One of the two Jewish refugee children the Franklins took in, Evi Eisenstädter, was from which country?

The nine-year-old shared a room with Franklin's sister Jenifer; the family helped settle Kindertransport refugees.

Which spectroscopist, her lab demonstrator at Cambridge, later became Franklin's senior colleague at King's?

Franklin studied chemistry within the Natural Sciences Tripos from 1938.

Franklin's wartime coal research body, BCURA, was on the Coombe Springs Estate near which town?

She joined as an assistant research officer in 1942 to fulfil the National Service Acts after resigning from Norrish's lab.

Which Swiss chemist in Berne prepared the highly purified calf-thymus DNA used at King's College?

He handed it out freely at a Faraday Society meeting in London in May 1950, and Wilkins was one of the recipients.

Who found Franklin's unpublished March 1953 B-DNA draft among her papers and published an evaluation in 1974?

The draft closely matched the third of the trio of Nature papers published on 25 April 1953.

Which Illinois institution renamed itself after Rosalind Franklin in 2004, taking Photo 51 as its logo?

It adopted the motto 'Life in Discovery' and Photo 51 as its logo, and unveiled a bronze statue of Franklin in 2014.