Volume 379, No.
9821, p1094–1095, 24 March 2012
Perspectives
Remembering my sister Rosalind Franklin
Article Info
Rosalind
Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958 aged 37 years. Sympathy and
feminism have combined to give us her familiar image as a downtrodden
woman scientist, brilliant but neglected, a heroine to inspire a new
generation of scientific girls. As Rosalind's sister, I saw her problems
and her distinction from a family viewpoint; her many surviving letters
home and my own recollections give a fuller picture of her life and
character.
She was, of course, a first-rate scientist;
one of the famous quartet who discovered the structure of DNA. And this
was certainly ignored 4 years after her death by Francis Crick and James
Watson when they accepted the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
without mentioning her in their speeches. This seemed a deliberate
omission, implied by Crick's written comment to Watson that he wanted to
avoid “anything in the way of a historical account”, while he had
written earlier to Jacques Monod that “the data which really helped us
to obtain the structure was mainly obtained by Rosalind Franklin”.
Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind's colleague, did make a brief reference to her
“very valuable” contribution.
Rosalind worked on DNA at
King's College London from January, 1951 to March, 1953. These 2 years
had been immensely successful scientifically, but they had been deeply
unhappy years personally. Unsure about her decision to go to King's at
all, everything seems to have conspired from the beginning to upset
Rosalind's rather sensitive and prickly nature. She had been told by
Professor John T Randall, the Head of the Department, that the DNA work
was to be her responsibility, while Maurice Wilkins, who had been
working on DNA, thought she had been brought in as his assistant. It was
not a good start, made worse by the apparent failure of Rosalind and
Maurice to co-operate or to understand each other's point of view. While
Crick and Watson stimulated each other with lively discussion in
Cambridge, Rosalind and Maurice worked in angry isolation from each
other in London.
Rosalind had come to King's with a
reputation for her skills in the use of x-ray diffraction and for her
intelligence in interpreting her results. She had learnt the techniques
in her time in Paris (1946–50), in the Laboratoire Central des Services
Chimiques de l'Etat. Here she had been able to combine, in an ideal way,
her love of France with continuation of her postgraduate research on
the structure of coals and carbons. She had 4 wonderfully happy and
fulfilling years in Paris, calling it “far and away the best city in the
world”, and producing a stream of papers that made her an authority in
the field, and that are still cited today. “I find life interesting”,
she wrote, “I have good friends and I find infinite kindness and good
will among the people I work with.”
Earlier, following a
Cambridge University degree in physical sciences, she had done a PhD on
the molecular structure of coals and carbons based on her wartime work
at the British Coal Utilisation Research Association. It was her growing
distinction in this field, together with a series of lucky chances,
that took her to the laboratory in Paris. And besides being productive
scientifically, Rosalind's years in Paris gave her scope for the
travelling and walking that were so important in her life. The pile of
family letters talk far more about her holidays, her friends, or living
conditions in postwar Paris, than about her work. She would go off with
friends cycling for weekends, or for longer trips to Italy or to the
Alps. She had a love of grand scenery, and became a formidable climber.
It
was not easy to leave Paris, but family and work both pulled her back
to London. It was, as she reluctantly realised, time to decide where her
future lay. She investigated various possibilities on her visits back
home, before applying, without too much enthusiasm, for an ICI or a
Turner and Newall Fellowship at King's College. However, the chance to
turn her expertise to the problems of biological structures appealed to
her.
There was a logic and consistency in the progress of
her work, as there was in her character. She knew from early days at
school that her interest lay in science. And despite myths repeated by
some in the media and on websites that my father was opposed to
university education for women, there was parental support for her
ambition to study science at Cambridge. Certainly, in the autumn of
1939, there was pressure on her to abandon university life for some sort
of immediate war work, but she insisted that she would be of more use
with a chemistry degree than working without one as an incompetent clerk
or land girl. She was right, of course, and proved herself so at the
British Coal Utilisation Research Association.
The years
of DNA research have become famous, but they only lasted for a short
part of Rosalind's brief life. She was so unhappy at King's that,
despite the overwhelming importance of the work, she longed to leave. 2
years into her 3-year fellowship she was glad to be able to move to the
more congenial atmosphere of J D Bernal's crystallography laboratory in
the crumbling Georgian building in Torrington Square that was part of
Birkbeck College. She had planned this move even before the publication
of the DNA structure in the seminal papers in Nature in April,
1953. But at Birkbeck her work was, she argued, equally important,
involving, as she wrote in a report in 1956, “what is probably the most
fundamental of all questions concerning the mechanism of living
processes, namely the relationship between protein and nucleic acid in
the living cell”. It was a continuation of the analysis of molecular
structure, applied again to biological problems. All went impressively
well. First, she investigated the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV)—a tradition
that had grown since Maurice Beijerinck, the scientist son of a tobacco
merchant who had been bankrupted by his diseased crop, had identified
the cause of the disease, and first shown a “virus” to the world in
1898. TMV had become the prototype virus, and Rosalind's 5-foot-high
model was displayed at the Brussels World Fair in 1958. She had planned
the model in intervals of her illness, using the most unlikely
materials—my brother Colin remembers her asking for 250 polystyrene
moulds like the ones used for displaying hats in shop windows. But
Rosalind never saw the final result, for the Fair opened on April 17,
just a day after she died.
Rosalind's models in Brussels,
other virus models shown at the Royal Institution, and Rosalind's
demonstration at a Royal Society Conversazione, were all outward forms
of success that even our unscientific family could appreciate. Together
with the fine obituaries written by Bernal, they made us realise that
this bright child, who had impressed us with her determination and
perfectionism, had grown into a seriously distinguished scientist. Her
early death was a loss to science as well as a tragedy for her family.
That might have been the sad end of the story, but in 1968 Watson published The Double Helix,
one of the most popular science books ever written. It was a highly
readable account of the greatest biological breakthrough of the 20th
century. But the book gave an insulting portrayal of Rosalind. With such
lines as “clearly Rosy had to go or be put in her place”, it made her
into an obstructive belligerent bluestocking, churning out results
secretively and without understanding. This unsympathetic image gave
great distress to her family, and even became a warning to girls who
might think of a career in science.
The reaction provoked
by the book, although slow initially, has been astonishing. First,
Rosalind's American friend Anne Sayre decided to write a book in
Rosalind's defence, a protest, as she said, that Rosalind could no
longer make herself. Rosalind Franklin and DNA is a less spectacular book than The Double Helix,
but after 35 years it is still in print. It was the start of what has
become something of a “Rosalind industry”. After studying Rosalind's
notebooks, Nobel Laureate Aaron Klug, who had worked with Rosalind at
Birkbeck, wrote authoritatively on her contribution to the DNA story.
Brenda Maddox's full and widely read account of the story appeared in
2002.
Now a sometimes almost unrecognisable Rosalind has
been put on an unrealistic pedestal. She is no longer a warning, but has
become “the forgotten heroine”. Her story has been adopted by feminists
as a symbol of a woman struggling and unacknowledged in a man's world.
This would, I think, have embarrassed her almost as much as Watson's
account would have upset her. It suited the feminism of the 1960s and
1970s to portray her as a victim of male dominance, but she would have
thought of herself simply as a scientist whose achievements should have
been judged on their own terms, not as a “woman scientist” striking a
blow for the rights of women. It is hard to say how far Rosalind's
difficulties at King's College were added to because she was a woman, as
well as arising from misunderstandings and a basic personality clash.
She certainly felt insulted when she found that the main dining room at
King's, where scientists would meet for discussions over lunch or
coffee, was open only to men; this un-Parisian attitude was hard to take
even if not unusual in English colleges at the time. Never integrated
into the life of the lab, she felt marginalised, in a way that may well
have made her more prickly and assertive, increasing the tensions.
Rosalind Franklin at the Cabane des Evettes in the French Alps (c 1951)
Reproduced with permission of Vittorio Luzzati.
Reproduced with permission of Vittorio Luzzati.
Vittorio Luzzati
60
years later, more than compensating for earlier problems, King's
College now has a Franklin Wilkins Building and a distinguished series
of lectures in Rosalind's name. There are Rosalind Franklin Buildings in
Cambridge for Newnham College, and in Brussels for Louvain University,
while a whole university has adopted her name in Chicago. I am
constantly amazed at the rash of TV and radio programmes, plays, and
projects for films. Although she was never an active feminist, perhaps
the memorials that would have pleased her best are those that use her
name to promote opportunities for young women academics—the annual award
given by the Royal Society to promote women in science, and the
fellowships given by the University of Groningen to help launch women
who are beginning their academic careers. She is certainly not
forgotten.
Further reading
- Glynn, J. My sister Rosalind Franklin. Oxford University Press, ; 2012
- Glynn, J. Rosalind Franklin: 50 years on. Notes Rec R Soc. 2008; 62: 253–255
- Klug, A. The discovery of the DNA double helix. J Mol Biol. 2004; 35: 3–26
- Maddox, B. Rosalind Franklin: the dark lady of DNA. HarperCollins, London; 2002
- Sayre, A. Rosalind Franklin and DNA. W W Norton & Co, New York; 1975
