The work also helped to explain why coke burns so efficiently - hot and with little smoke. Coke could be transformed into crystalline graphite at high temperatures, whereas char could not. This work revealed the main difference between coke and char - two products of burning coal. The following year, she laid out her most important contribution to coal science: the discovery that the carbon formed as coal burns falls into one of two categories, graphitizing or non-graphitizing, and that each has a distinct molecular structure 3. Her first Nature paper, in January 1950, explored how certain electrons in carbon affect how it scatters X-rays 2. The double helix and the ‘wronged heroine’įranklin’s coal research established her reputation. As such, Franklin indirectly aided in the design of the personal protective equipment of her day. But, as Patricia Fara, a historian of science at the University of Cambridge, UK, points out, the porosity of coal was also a key factor in the effectiveness of Second World War gas masks, which contained activated-charcoal filters. Franklin wanted to understand the porosity of coal, mainly to learn how to make it burn more efficiently. In some of her earliest work, in the 1940s, including her PhD, Franklin helped to determine the density, structure and composition of coal, a fossil fuel that was used widely to heat homes and to power industry. ![]() In essence, it is because of Franklin, her collaborators and successors, that today’s researchers are able to use tools such as DNA sequencing and X-ray crystallography to investigate viruses such as SARS-CoV-2.įranklin’s research career began in the physical sciences. She made important advances in the science of coal and carbon, and she became an expert in the study of viruses that cause plant and human diseases. She was a tireless investigator of nature’s secrets, and worked across biology, chemistry and physics, with a focus on research that mattered to society. ![]() She is best known for an X-ray diffraction image that she and her graduate student Raymond Gosling published in 1953 1, which was key to the determination of the DNA double helix.īut Franklin’s remarkable work on DNA amounts to a fraction of her record and legacy. The one-hundredth anniversary of her birth this month is prompting much reflection on her career and research contributions, not least Franklin’s catalytic role in unravelling the structure of DNA. This is followed by the inscription, “Her research and discoveries on viruses remain of lasting benefit to mankind.”Īs one of the twentieth century’s pre-eminent scientists, Franklin’s work has benefited all of humanity. At the centre of Rosalind Franklin’s tombstone in London’s Willesden Jewish Cemetery is the word “scientist”.
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