Pioneer For Women
Rosalind Franklin started out having attended St. Paul's Girls' School, which is one of the first schools to teach physics and chemistry to girls. Franklin decided she wanted to become a scientist when she was fifteen years old. Her father opposed the idea, and wanted her to go into social work. He worried that she would have a hard time finding a job in the field as a female. Her family was very active in the public sphere: her parents were involved in resettling Jews from Europe, and her aunt was involved in the women's suffrage movement.
Franklin is also well known for her pioneering work in x-ray diffraction. Throughout her very short, sixteen-year career, Franklin provided crucial information that helped lead to the discovery of the structure of DNA, and published nineteen articles on coals and carbons, five on DNA, and twenty-one on viruses. However, her key role in developing the structure of DNA was overlooked because of her early death and the attitudes of the scientists of the time toward women scientists. |