By: Maxim Calle
Did you know Rosalind Franklin was stripped of the Nobel Prize? Rosalind Franklin was born into an influential Jewish family located in London, England. From the age of 6, she excelled in Math and science, foreshadowing what her career would look like. Young Rosalind Franklin also was intellectually curious, and oftentimes debated with others to develop her ideas on complex subjects. Along with all this, she studied German, Hebrew, Latin, and French while performing well in cricket.
Having known she wanted to become a scientist from the age of 16, in 1942, Rosalind took her physics and chemistry mastery to the London Coal Co. Here, she worked on the properties of carbon. It's important to note that this was during World War 2, and carbon was extremely useful toward the war efforts. 8 years later, Rosalind found a load of great discoveries related to DNA. She found that there were 2 forms of DNA, the strands of DNA are most likely helical, and high levels of moisture make the structure of DNA change. After 3 years of research on this great subject, her colleague Maurice Wilkins stole and shared Rosalind's findings with 2 others named James Watson and Francis Crick.
In March 1958, Rosalind Franklin sadly passed away at only the age of 37 due to multiple illnesses. Only 4 years later was the Nobel Prize awarded to James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. Due to the nowadays term “plagiarism” from Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin lost her shot at achieving such a prestigious award. James Watson even admits that he only won the prize and published a famous article because of Rosalind Franklin. Rosalind is recognized for the discoveries but at the end of the day, she was still robbed of the Nobel Prize.
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