Rosalind Franklin — "My own work is concerned with the structure of nucleic acids. I am trying to det…"
My own work is concerned with the structure of nucleic acids. I am trying to determine the structure of DNA.
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More from Rosalind Franklin
"The most exciting moments in science are when you discover something completely new."
"I find it a great pity that the scientific world is so competitive. It often hinders progress."
"It's like a helix, only more complicated."
"My aim is to obtain experimental results that are beyond doubt."
"The term 'helical' is used to describe a structure in which the chains are coiled round a common axis."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
A simple, precise declaration of scientific intent: Franklin was working to map the physical arrangement of atoms within DNA — the molecule responsible for heredity. Determining DNA's structure meant understanding how genes are stored and copied. In plain terms, she was doing foundational lab work that would reveal how life passes information across generations, using X-ray diffraction images to build an exact molecular model from physical evidence.
Relevance to Rosalind Franklin
Franklin was King's College London's lead X-ray crystallographer on DNA in the early 1950s. Her precise technique produced Photo 51 in 1952 — the sharpest diffraction image of DNA ever captured. Watson and Crick used it, without her consent, to finalize their double helix model. Her understated first-person phrasing mirrors her character: empirical, never speculative. She died of ovarian cancer in 1958, four years before Watson, Crick, and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize.
The era
The early 1950s brought intense competition to solve DNA's structure — Cambridge's Watson and Crick, Pauling at Caltech, and Franklin's team at King's College London were all racing. Biology was shifting from descriptive to molecular science. Women faced structural exclusion: Franklin was barred from King's College's men-only senior common room. When Watson and Crick published the double helix in April 1953, it became the century's pivotal discovery, launching modern genetics and biotechnology.
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