Rosalind Franklin
carlyo | March 27, 2014This month, join the USA Science & Engineering Festival and the rest of the nation in celebrating Women's History Month, paying tribute to generations of women around the world whose contributions to numerous fields and endeavors -- including those in science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- have proven invaluable to society.
The national theme of Women's History Month this year is "Celebrating Women of Character, Courage, and Commitment," and we invite you to commemorate such innovators in two ways with the Festival. First, visit the Festival's Role Models in Science &…
carlyo | May 16, 2013Heroes should never be forgotten, but unfortunately too many of them in the field of science go missing from our classroom textbooks. Equally disturbing is that a disproportionate number of these heroes overlooked are women and minorities.
While the average American young person will likely have no trouble detailing the latest antics of such stars as Ashton Kutcher, Lindsay Lohan, or Kanye & Kim, most, sadly, would be hard-pressed to tell you who the following trailblazers in science were:
-- Molecular biologist Rosiland Franklin, who was responsible for much of the research and discovery…
emjohnson | July 25, 2009On July 25, 1920 the English biophysicist Rosalind Franklin was born. She was instrumental in discovering the molecular structure of DNA, though her vital contributions were only posthumously acknowledged. After receiving her PhD from Cambridge in 1945 she worked as a research associate for John Randall at King's College in London. Beginning in early 1951 she took X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA that showed a helical form of the molecule, a finding confirmed by James Watson and Francis Crick who subsequently won the Nobel Prize for their DNA research. In lecture notes dated November…