At Cellomatics we are proud to have so many skilled female scientists in our team providing us with a wealth of experience and expertise.
To celebrate this year’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science we decided to ask our female scientists to nominate just one of the truly inspirational female scientists who have motivated them into the industry and perhaps even shaped their goals and ambitions.
Dr Zoe Lee had no hesitation..
“Rosalind Franklin. Sorry, it’s an obvious choice but it is my honest choice. The structure of DNA was one of my favourite topics at university!
The discovery of the structure of DNA and the discovery of homologous recombination in my opinion built a solid foundation upon which cancer researchers could learn more about the biological pathways that transform a normal cell into a cancer cell, and of course these lead onto the generation of new medicines to treat cancer. This is where my heart lies in science, and so this is why I selected Rosalind Franklin.”
So who is, or was, Rosalind Franklin?
Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist whose X-ray diffraction work made the discovery of the structure of DNA possible.
She created the famous “Photo 51” which demonstrated the double-helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid by refining over 100 hours of X-ray exposure.
However, Franklin did not achieve the levels of fame that would be imagined after such a discovery. Her biographer, Brenda Maddox, referred to her as the “Dark Lady of DNA” as due to a personality clash with her colleague Maurice Wilkins she was not immediately credited for this ground-breaking discovery.
Wilkins showed her “Photo 51” to James Watson without her permission. This photo was used by Watson as the basis for the model of DNA, which led to him winning a Nobel Prize.
Rosalind Franklin, sadly, received very little recognition for her revolutionary discovery until after her death in 1958, but her contribution to science was ground-breaking and it’s one that, at Cellomatics, we’ll be celebrating today.
