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Remembering my sister Rosalind Franklin

2012; Elsevier BV; Volume: 379; Issue: 9821 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0140-6736(12)60452-8

1474-547X

Jenifer Glynn,

Race, Genetics, and Society

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. 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.