Rosalind Franklin Research Paper

519 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Everything about rosalind franklin essay

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was an English chemist and x-ray crystallographer who made immense contributions to the understanding of the structure of the DNA- the double helix. She faced both skepticism and criticism studying molecular biology when most women her age would take up domestic duties. Nevertheless, she continued her research in the face of adversity. Rosalind Franklin’s tenacity, sheer will power, and overall perseverance in a male dominated field made her a driving force in the field of molecular biology.

Born on July 25, 1920, in Notting Hill, London, Franklin showed exemplary academic abilities early on, both in linguistics and arithmetic’s. After securing a scholarship to the Newnham College in 1938, she studied chemistry with …show more content…

She and her student, Raymond Gosling used their x-ray diffraction techniques to create pictures of the DNA strands. What they found was that DNA came in two forms: “A” dry form and a “B” wet form. After 100 hours of x-ray exposure and adjustments, the “B” form proved evidence of the DNA’s molecular structure. Unfortunately, personality conflicts and prejudices between her and colleague Maurice Wilkins proved fatal when Wilkins disclosed her photographs without her knowledge to competing scientists, James Watsons and Francis Crick at Cambridge in 1953. Upon seeing the photos, Watson’s jaw dropped and went to work quickly disseminating the information in Watson and Crick’s famous model of the DNA merely three months later. The pair received a Nobel Prize in 1962. On April 10, Franklin went to see Watson and Crick’s crude model to which she replied, “It’s very pretty, but how are they going to prove it?” Being an experimental physicist, Franklin was much more concerned in gathering reliable evidence. Afterwards, she moved on to study the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), a type of RNA that was covered in protein helices, furthering supporting her original findings in DNA structure. On 1957, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and for ten months, continued her research until the age of

Show More
Related

  • Race for the Double Helix: An Analysis

    2257 Words  | 5 Pages

    Franklin does independent research and is doubted by others because of her gender, but Wilkins does not like this approach and is trying to get rid of her. Watson and Crick work together and are considered more credible.

    Read More

  • The Competition for the Secret of Life in James D. Watson’s Novel the Double Helix

    798 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ed some credit. People see the novel as a poor presentation of who she was and how important her ideas really were. However, I see that both are to blame. Franklin could have worked closer with Watson instead of withholding her results; Watson could have mentioned her in his work earlier on. I believe that this competitiveness between scientists was beneficial overall. This rivalry provided motivation and even though defeat seemed so near at times, they were able to persevere. There are several ways that Watson and Crick could have found the answer but I believe it is for the best that these events occurred the way they did because the ending result justifies all previous actions. The rivalry that sparked between these scientists yielded some negative results but it led to something even greater: the secret of life.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Gender In Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

    1211 Words  | 3 Pages

    Benjamin Franklin has been without a doubt one of the most relevant individuals in US history. His autobiography gives us a brief but detailed summary of what his life was like and how society worked in the eighteen century. This autobiography gives us many details of how the colonies where and offers and an overall image of the development of British North America which later turned into the United States. Due to the fact that this book was originally written for Franklin's son, the book concentrates in personal information and has very little information about other topics. However, there are some topics that can be extracted from his writings; one of them is gender. Even though, Franklin never talks openly about gender, we can observe how in his writing these roles are clearly assigned. In this paper, we will analyze how Benjamin's Franklin autobiography showcases the importance of gender in the early eighteenth century. Gender can be analyzed in Franklins book by looking at different topics. This given to men and women by society can be seen in the workspace, in the education of each individual, and in the family and family structure.

    Read More

  • Book Review Of Rosalind Franklin And DNA

    2207 Words  | 5 Pages

    The book Rosalind Franklin and DNA is a biography of Rosalind Franklin written by a British journalist and close friend of hers, Anne Sayre to reveal the true personality of Rosalind Franklin in contradiction to the fallacious character portrayed by James Watson in his personal account of The Double Helix. This book was undertaken to refute Franklin’s distorted portrait from abnormal feminist into rational, perfectionist and talented ‘women’ scientist. She begins by introducing her strong background, curious childhood, dedicated education, generous nature and most importantly how she was brought up in a favorable environment of distinctive Angelo-Jewish family, who identified and cultivated her talents and developed her in a person with full capacity for commitment. In this book, despite admiring the geniuses of Watson in depicting and picking out small information, connecting points and the kind of abilities he possessed was perfectly factitive with Crick that Rosalind and Gosling lacked however, she constantly tries to put the Rosalind’s side of story in picture which she believes was minimized in The Double Helix by Watson and correct her character that distorted in public eye.

    Read More

  • Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...or instance, hepatitis C virus), biological molecules (such as cyclic adenosine monophosphate), and Human Immunodeficiency (HIV) virus (Bauman et. al. 2011). Rosalyn had went farther in the world of science than anyone including her self thought was possible (Bauman et. al. 2011). Rosayln and Berson changed history, altered the way science was perceived and their time, and how today we see and research science.

    Read More

  • Watson And Crick's Unzipping The Secret Of Life

    2684 Words  | 6 Pages

    How Watson and Crick’s Discovery of the Structure of DNA Influenced American Industries and Scientific Development in the United States

    Read More

  • The Creation Of DNA By James Watson And Francis Crick

    1586 Words  | 4 Pages

    In April of 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick published a game changing paper. It would blow the mind of the scientific community and reshape the entire landscape of science. DNA, fully knows as Deoxyribonucleic Acid is the molecule that all genes are made of. Though it is a relatively new term with regard to the age of science, the story of DNA and the path to its discovery covers a much broader timeframe and had many more contributors than James Watson and Francis Crick. After reading the paper the audience should have a better understanding of what DNA is, the most important experiments that contributed to its ultimate discovery and the names and contributions of the lesser-known scientists that helped Watson and Crick turn their idea

    Read More

  • Rosalind Franklin

    509 Words  | 2 Pages

    	X-ray crystallography helped determined the three dimensional structure of DNA when Franklin returned to England. She became the first person to find the molecule¡¯s sugar-phosphate backbone while working with a team of scientists at King¡¯s College in London. Unfortunately, leadership misunderstandings and personality conflicts depreciated Franklin¡¯s effectivness in the laboratory. Maurice Wilkins, the laboratory¡¯s second in command, returned from a vacation expecting Franklin to work under him. Franklin came to the laboratory with the understanding that she would be researching alone. While Franklin was direct and decisive, Wilkins tended to be alluding and passive-aggressive. As Franklin made further advances in DNA research, Wilkins secretly shared her findings with the famous duo of Watson and Crick, who were then working at Cambridge. Franklin¡¯s discoveries fueled their research machine, allowing them to advance beyond others in the field. They would eventually publish on DNA structure in 1953. Due to discriminatory procedures at King¡¯s College, Franklin eventually left to become the lead researcher at London¡¯s Birbeck College--upon agreeing not to work on DNA. She furthered her studies in coal and made significant advances in virology. Franklin died in 1958 of ovarian cancer. She lived 37 monumentally significant years.

    Read More

  • Solving the Structure of DNA

    817 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first and primary contribution to solving the DNA structure was the relationship of Crick and Watson. Without their teamwork and determination, another scientist would have discovered the structure before them. One of Crick’s bigger contributions was discovering the gene is self-replicating. After talking with John Griffith, Crick came up with the idea that the gene is self-replicating, meaning the gene has the ability “to be exactly copied when the chromosome number doubles during cell division”(126). With further discussion with Griffith, Francis believed that DNA replication involved specific attractive forces between the flat surfaces of the bases (128). One of Watson’s major contributions was after seeing the B form of DNA by Franklin, Watson knew that the structure of DNA was two-chained and that led to the building of the model of DNA (171). Also through research, Watson became aware that adenine and thymine pair together and are held by two hydrogen bonds that were identical in shape to the guanine and cytosine pair held together by at least two hydrogen bonds (194). This discovery showed that the two chains of DNA are complementary to each other. With these individual contributions coming together, Watson and Crick successfully were able to piece together the structure of DNA.

    Read More

  • The Double Helix

    1858 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the first several chapters of The Double Helix, James Watson gives detailed descriptions of the places and people who were of some importance in this charade of science. Watson wrote of his personal history and of how he arrived at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. In this laboratory was a yet-unknown thirty-five year old man named Frances Crick . When Watson joined the team at Cavendish it was to help continue studies on the structure of proteins. Some of the people in the lab that Watson mentioned were Sir Lawr...

    Read More

  • Never Cry Wolf Foreshadowing

    687 Words  | 2 Pages

    Owen Butler Mrs. Harper GT Honors English 1 4/18/24 Never Cry Wolf ECR Imagine being in the dark and cool climate of the Arctic with little to no help or protection. In the book Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat, that is what Mowat had to go through. He lived in a cabin down by a river, which was very unfortunate for him because there was recent flooding in the river and it got into his cabin. He was forced to vacate his home until the flooding went away because it was not safe with the temperature and time of day. The story uses the setting of the Arctic location and landscape along with the time of day to create the mood of suspense.

    Read More

  • Marie Maynard Daly Essay

    711 Words  | 2 Pages

    Marie explored the roles of the cytoplasmic ribonuleicprotein and how to measure protein metabolism. In 1953 Watson and Crick described the structure of the DNA, which allowed Marie to further her research. In 1955 she began working in the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University where she studied the effects of aging, hypertension and atherosclerosis had on the metabolism of arterial wall. She continued working as the assistant professor of biochemistry and Marie taught medical students at Yeshiva University in 1960 where she was focused on increasing the amount of minorities attending medical

    Read More

  • Overview of the Importance of DNA

    1575 Words  | 4 Pages

    Simply put, DNA contains the instructions needed for an organism to develop, survive, and reproduce. The discovery and use of DNA has seen many changes and made great progress over many years. James Watson was a pioneer molecular biologist who is credited, along with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, with discovering the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. The three won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962 for their work (Bagley, 2013). Scientists use the term “double helix” to describe DNA’s winding, two-stranded chemical structure.

    Read More

  • The Double Helix Sparknotes

    871 Words  | 2 Pages

    Herman stopped teaching Watson after going through a divorce with his wife, and sent Watson off to a scientific conference in Naples. Although he was bored by many of the lectures, Maurice Wilkins’s talk about X-ray diffraction fascinated Watson. He was struck by an X-ray diffraction picture of DNA that Maurice presented and was determined to study the acid. He later got to know more about Maurice’s colleague, Rosalind Franklin, who was proud, stubborn, and very difficult to work with. Watson greatly admired the lecture given by the renowned Linus Pauling, who had discovered the structure of the alpha-helix and was thought of as the leader in DNA research in the scientific world.

    Read More

  • Essay On Anatomy And Physiology

    1054 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...f the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 that was extremely influential for future researchers. They determined that DNA was a double helix structure composed of base pairings, with a sugar phosphate backbone. This model explained how “genes can duplicate themselves [and] would eventually lead to our current understanding of many things, from genetic disease to genetic engineering” (Salem).

    Read More

More about Rosalind Franklin Research Paper

Open Document