This novel the story of Rosalind Franklin, one of the very great women scientist of the 20C. Even though 3 men took credit for her discoveries. 6/4/22
1915William Henry Bragg received Nobel Prize for founding X Ray crystallography at the Royal Institution in London. Rosalind felt this could be used for other substances.
1926 physicist Jean Perrin proved the existence of molecules and won the Nobel Prize.
1933 Erwin Schrodinger wrote "What is Life" and won a Nobel prize and then left Vienna for London.
1944 Oswald Avery in the US proposed that DNA carries the genetic material not protein.
1942 Rosalind had worked for the British Coal Utilisation Research association BCURA. The research in coal had helped her get a PhD at Cambridge in 1945.
1947 This novel starts when Rosalind Franklin started work at the Laboratory Central de Services Chemique, her job was under a scientist who had been under the Ministry of Defense. Her immediate boss was Jaques Mering who she knew from Cambridge as he had fled to England during the war.. In a Paris restaurant she hears discussions of Les Temps Modernes edited by Simon de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Satre.
When she was at a Royal Institution conference and challenged a man's view, others called out that women should know their place.
In Paris she felt very comfortable as she was treated well and her knowledge was respected by both men and women, had a place where she belonged and went with the dept for lunch at a restaurant.
Jaques Mering was born in Russia and Jewish. Adriene Weill was Jewish and trained under Marie Curie. During the war she and her daughter Marianne escaped to Cambridge Rosalind asked her for French lessons. She and Adrienne became close friends.
The Franklin family, related to the Rabbi Loew of Prague had left Poland in the 1700s and were successful bankers in England. They lived in Bayswater and were involved in assisting Jewish refugees arriving and Kindertransport children. Herbert Samuels was a cousin of her paternal grandfather and she was also related to Norman Bentwich who served as Attorney General in Palestine.
Rosalind did not intend to marry as she wanted to be able to work or science.
Her brother David married Myrtle and so joined the Sebag Montefiore. Rosalind also had a sister Jenifer and 2 younger brothers Roland and Colin.
Ernest Wollan who had designed a device at the Manhattan Project to check radiation workers received. When you receive too much radiation you are supposed to take leave for a while but Rosalind hid this.
1947 In Paris Rosalind was well respected as a brilliant scientist and the papers she was encouraged to publish were all in her own name. But he also wanted her mistress. Jaques Mering who ran the department gave her 100% of the credit but after 3 years she wanted to return home to London where she was given a post at the University College under Professor John Randel. This was the first university to accept both Catholics and Jews.
1951 She worked with among others HAH Boot who had developed the electromagnetic beam to detect German submarines. Here men would not recognize her in her own right. They still had men's only canteen and deliberately excluded her.
A grant came from the Medical council and her research was to be on DNA structure using her X-ray crystallography experience. Maurice Wilking kept taking credit for her work. Her progress talk got a big grant.
At Cavendish in Cambridge she was shown a DNA model that she knew was totally wrong but just said that they have not included the water as it is always moist.
1952 Photo 51 proved that both forms of DNA were in a helix.
Birkbeck College which was part of London University accepted women 40 years before Oxford. This was run by John Desmond Bernal who was a communist supporter and she was in charge of her own laboratory.
Aaron Klug arrived in Durban as a 2 year old child from Lithuania and became a doctor and wanted to work with her. Don Caspar became her closest friend and he suggested they ask for funding support from the American Agricultural Research Council. Ken Holmes, molecular scientist.
1953 the year Queen Elizabeth II was crowned and when Stalin died.
1953 Jonas Salk at this time was working on the Polio vaccine
1956 Cysts resulted in an operation to remove Rosalind's ovaries and a hysterectomy. At this point their publications were so prolific that they were getting plenty of funding. All 3 of her team were able to publish many papers under her guidance and all were leading scientist after her death
1958 March died of Cancer aged 37 She left a large grant to Aaron Klug
1962 James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize on the genetics of DNA discovery. (This should have been her prize)
1962 Max Perutz won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with John Kendrew for hemoglobin structure.
1968 The Double Helix by James Watson. This book became a bestseller but the people who knew considered it a "contemptible pack of lies" and it did not portray the Rosalind that people knew.
1975 Anne Sayers wrote the book Rosalind Franklin and DNA, Here Rosalind friend told the true story
1982 Aaron Klug won Nobel prize for chemistry - nucleic acid complexes
My sister Rosalind Franklin by Jenifer Glynn 2012 160p bi 7/8/13
This book Minne Fry from Bayswater who knew the family ,gave to my wife Astrid. I found the a history of a great scientist and also the Jewish side of it fascinating.
This is an excellent story of a women scientist at a time when very few women were in the field.
Her career took her to the study of coal , then carbon and this lead to the study of crystals, then the tobacco virus and that lead to the study of DNA and later genetic coding which we take for granted today. She lived in Paris and met a different scientific field which she had the skill to use in her further research.
This book covers the history of science, portrays the time of WW2 in London as well as Jewish history of Notting Gate, London. She died at the age of 37 of cancer from her work in 1958 and other scientists took up her work won the Nobel prize and never even acknowledge the debt to her. Her hand written papers prove that she had the information before them , and recently perhaps she received the recognition she deserved.
