On our second Theme Thursday, we feature the story of one woman whose contributions to scientific discovery were only recognized posthumously: Rosalind Franklin. Rosalind Franklin was an X-ray crystallographer who made significant contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA. Her work was used without her permission, and she received little credit before she died. She passed away before her c
colleagues were awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery.
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, by Brenda Maddox won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology in 2002. From the book’s cover: “In 1962, Maurice Wilkins, Francis Crick, and James Watson received the Nobel Prize, but it was Rosalind Franklin’s data and photographs of DNA that led to their discovery. Brenda Maddox tells a powerful story of a remarkably single-minded, forthright, and tempestuous young woman who, at the age of fifteen, decided she was going to be a scientist, but who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century.”