Rosalind Franklin was so much more than the 'wronged heroine' of DNA [View all]

[NNadir]

An editorial in the current issue of Nature:

Rosalind Franklin was so much more than the ‘wronged heroine’ of DNA

It's open sourced, but some excerpts:

At the centre of Rosalind Franklin’s tombstone in London’s Willesden Jewish Cemetery is the word “scientist”. This is followed by the inscription, “Her research and discoveries on viruses remain of lasting benefit to mankind.”

As one of the twentieth century’s pre-eminent scientists, Franklin’s work has benefited all of humanity. The one-hundredth anniversary of her birth this month is prompting much reflection on her career and research contributions, not least Franklin’s catalytic role in unravelling the structure of DNA.

She is best known for an X-ray diffraction image that she and her graduate student Raymond Gosling published in 19531, which was key to the determination of the DNA double helix.

But Franklin’s remarkable work on DNA amounts to a fraction of her record and legacy. She was a tireless investigator of nature’s secrets, and worked across biology, chemistry and physics, with a focus on research that mattered to society. She made important advances in the science of coal and carbon, and she became an expert in the study of viruses that cause plant and human diseases. In essence, it is because of Franklin, her collaborators and successors, that today’s researchers are able to use tools such as DNA sequencing and X-ray crystallography to investigate viruses such as SARS-CoV-2...

...Franklin wanted to understand the porosity of coal, mainly to learn how to make it burn more efficiently. But, as Patricia Fara, a historian of science at the University of Cambridge, UK, points out, the porosity of coal was also a key factor in the effectiveness of Second World War gas masks, which contained activated-charcoal filters. As such, Franklin indirectly aided in the design of the personal protective equipment of her day...

...From coal, Franklin moved on to the study of viruses, which would fascinate her for the remainder of her life. During the 1950s, she spent five productive years at Birkbeck College in London using her X-ray skills to determine the structure of RNA in the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), which attacks plants and destroys tobacco crops. The virus was discovered in the 1890s...

...With the structure of TMV resolved, Franklin set out to study other plant viruses blighting important agricultural crops, including the potato, turnip, tomato and pea. Then, in 1957, she pivoted again to begin studying the virus that causes polio, which is structurally similar to the turnip yellow mosaic virus. At the time, polio was a feared communicable disease. It has since been mostly eradicated, although cases linger in Pakistan and Afghanistan...

...In 1956, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and she died two years later at the age of just 37. Her collaborators Aaron Klug and John Finch published the poliovirus structure the following year, dedicating the paper to her memory4. Klug would go on to be awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on elucidating the structure of viruses.

A broader story than the one you usually hear.