Location: Ebling Symposium Center, 1220 Microbial Sciences Building

Abstract: Rosalind Franklin is best known for her informative X-ray diffraction patterns of DNA that provided vital clues for James Watson and Francis Crick's double-stranded helical model. However, her scientific career did not end when she left the DNA work at King's College. In 1953, Franklin moved to J. D. Bernal's crystallography laboratory at Birkbeck College, where she shifted her focus to the three-dimensional structure of viruses, obtaining diffraction patterns of Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) of unprecedented
detail and clarity. During the next five years, while making significant headway on the structural determination of TMV, Franklin maintained active correspondence with both Watson and Crick, who were also studying aspects of virus structure. Developments in TMV research during the 1950s illustrate the connections in the emerging field of molecular biology between structural studies of nucleic acids and structural studies of proteins and viruses. They also reveal how the protagonists of the "race for the double helix" continued to interact scientifically and personally during the years that Watson and Crick's model for the double-helical structure of DNA was debated and confirmed.

Cosponsored by Department of the History of Science
WISELI's Celebrating Women in Science and Engineering Grant Program
The Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies
Department of Plant Pathology
Department of Bacteriology