Rosalind Franklin birthday: Story of the forgotten heroine of science who helped sequence DNA

July 25 is the birthday of Rosalind Franklin, the almost-forgotten woman scientist who was part of the team that unravelled the mysteries of human DNA, but she did not getdeserved credit for it during her lifetime.

Besides sequencing the DNA, short for Deoxyribonucleic acid which is the building block of life, Franklin was also behind a number of pioneering scientific discoveries and experiments spanning across biology, chemistry and physics.

Who was Rosalind Franklin?

Rosalind Franklin was a British scientist whose work withX-ray crystallography, along with James Watson and Francis Crick, helped in the understanding of DNA as well as RNA or ribonucleic acid. Her work also helped in the study of structures of viruses as well as natural materials like coal and graphite.

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Born in 1920 into a wealthy and influential British-Jewish family, she studied at some of the most prestigious institutions in the country including Cambridge University.

As written in her tombstone, her discoveries on viruses "remain of lasting benefit to mankind".

But her best-known work remains the imaging of DNA through X-ray diffraction imaging.

As reported in a profile by Nature magazine, she "worked across biology, chemistry and physics".

Besides studying coal and carbon, she was an expert on viruses affecting both humans and plants including tobacco mosaic virus and poliovirus. Her work in DNA sequencing eventually helped modern medical science in tracing deadly viruses including the one that caused the recent Covid pandemic.

A forgotten heroine

Science, like many other fields, was a male-dominated domain in the 20th century, which led to Franklinfacing sexism, sidelining and gender bias. It had been reported that while she worked with Maurice Wilkins on the imaging of DNA at King's College London, the latter passed on her data with Watson and Crick without her permission. Eventually, much of the DNA discoveries were named after Watson and Crick as we know today.

Franklin, who died of ovarian cancer at the young age of 37 in 1958, was not recognised in line with her contributions to science during her lifetime.

But currently, she is considered a pioneer in molecular biology, physics and chemistry. There have been frequent calls to honour her posthumously with a Nobel Prize, but that is yet to happen.

She was among the trailblazers who made the fields of genetics and molecular biology what they are today.

(With inputs from agencies)