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Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 192016 April 1958) was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, her contributions to the discovery of DNA were largely recognized posthumously. Born to a prominent British Jewish family, Franklin was educated at a private day school at Norland Place in West London, Lindores School for Young Ladies in Sussex, and St Paul's Girls' School. She excelled in all major subjects and sports. She passed her matriculation at age eighteen, and won the School Leaving Exhibition of £30 a year for three years. Her father asked her to donate the money she earned to refugee students during World War II. Then she studied the Natural Sciences Tripos at Newnham College, Cambridge, from where she graduated in 1941. Earning a research fellowship, she joined the University of Cambridge physical chemistry laboratory under Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, who disappointed her for his lack of enthusiasm.〔Glynn, p. 60〕 Fortunately, the British Coal Utilisation Research Association (BCURA) offered her a research position in 1942, and started her work on coals. This helped her earn a PhD in 1945. She went to Paris in 1947 as a ''chercheur'' (post-doctoral researcher) under Jacques Mering at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'Etat, where she became an accomplished X-ray crystallographer. She became a research associate at King's College London, in 1951, but was compelled to move to Birkbeck College after two years, owing to disagreeable clashes with her director John Randall and more so with her colleague Maurice Wilkins. At Birkbeck, Chair of Physics Department J. D. Bernal offered her a separate research team. She died in 1958 at the age of 37 of ovarian cancer. Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA while at King's College, London, which led to the discovery of the DNA double helix. Franklin's X-ray diffraction images, which implied a helical structure for DNA and enabled inferences concerning certain key details thereof, were shown to James Watson by Wilkins.〔() Rosalind Franklin's Legacy, Interview of Lynn Osman Elkin conducted on 26 March 2003〕 According to Francis Crick, her data were key in determining Watson and Crick's 1953 model, the correct description of the helical structure of DNA.〔 Watson and Crick's article was immediately followed by the two King's College submissions: then by: 〕 Watson also confirmed this opinion in his own statement at the opening of the King's College London Franklin–Wilkins building in 2000.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.kingscollections.org/exhibitions/archives/dna/further-work/future )〕 Among her key findings was that the conformation of the DNA double helix depends on the level of hydration. She is responsible for discovering and naming of A-DNA and B-DNA, which are the forms at low and high hydration, respectively. Watson and Crick's model was for the B form, which is the common form in the cell. It was not known whether or not A-DNA had any biological functions, but several are now known. Her work was published third, in the series of three DNA ''Nature'' articles, led by the paper of Watson and Crick.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=''Double Helix: 50 Years of DNA.'' Nature archives. )〕 Watson, Crick and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Watson suggested that Franklin would have ideally been awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Wilkins, but the Nobel Committee does not make posthumous awards.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Discovery of the Molecular Structure of DNA - The Double Helix )〕 After finishing her portion of the work on DNA, with her own research team at Birkbeck College, Franklin led pioneering work on the molecular structures of viruses, including tobacco mosaic virus and the polio virus.〔 Her team member, and later her beneficiary, Aaron Klug continued her research and went on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1982. Had she been alive, she would very likely have shared that prize as well. ==Early life and education== Franklin was born in 50 Chepstow Villas, Notting Hill, London into an affluent and influential British Jewish family.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.londonremembers.com/subjects/rosalind-franklin )〕〔GRO Register of Births: SEP 1920 1a 250 KENSINGTON – Rosalind E. Franklin, mmn = Waley〕 Her father was Ellis Arthur Franklin (1894–1964), a politically liberal London merchant banker who taught at the city's Working Men's College, and her mother was Muriel Frances Waley (1894–1976). Rosalind was the elder daughter and the second child in the family of five children. David (born 1919) was the eldest brother; Colin (born 1923), Roland (born 1926), and Jenifer (born 1929) were her younger siblings.〔Glynn, p.1〕 Her father's uncle was Herbert Samuel (later Viscount Samuel), who was the Home Secretary in 1916 and the first practising Jew to serve in the British Cabinet.〔Maddox p. 7〕 Her aunt, Helen Caroline Franklin, known in the family as Mamie, was married to Norman de Mattos Bentwich, who was the Attorney General in the British Mandate of Palestine.〔Segev p.〕 She was active in trade union organisation and the women's suffrage movement, and was later a member of the London County Council.〔Maddox p. 40〕 Her uncle, Hugh Franklin, was another prominent figure in the suffrage movement, although his actions therein embarrassed the Franklin family. Her middle name, "Elsie", was in memory of Hugh's first wife, who died in the 1918 flu pandemic.〔 Her family was actively involved with the Working Men's College, where her father taught the subjects of electricity, magnetism, and the history of the Great War in the evenings, later becoming the vice-principal.〔Maddox, p. 20〕〔Sayre, p. 35〕 Franklin's parents helped settle Jewish refugees from Europe who had escaped the Nazis, particularly those from the ''kindertransport''.〔Polcovar, p. 20〕 They took in two Jewish children to their home, and one of them, a nine-year-old Austrian, Evi Eisenstädter, shared Jenifer's room. (Evi's father Hans Mathias Eisenstädter had been imprisoned in Buchenwald, and after liberation, the family adopted the surname "Ellis".)〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.geni.com/people/Hans-John-Eisenstadter-Ellis/6000000004979539587 )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/s/c/h/Ella-Elisabeth-Schiller-Victoria/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0252.html )〕 From early childhood, Franklin showed exceptional scholastic abilities. At age six, she joined her brother Roland at Norland Place School, a private day school at Holland Park Avenue, West London. At that time, her aunt Mamie (Helen Bentwich), described her to her husband: "Rosalind is alarmingly clever – she spends all her time doing arithmetic for pleasure, & invariably gets her sums right."〔Maddox, p. 15〕 She also developed an early interest in cricket and hockey. At age nine, she entered a boarding school, Lindores School for Young Ladies in Sussex. The school was near the seaside, and the family wanted a good environment for her delicate health. She was eleven when she went to St Paul's Girls' School,〔Glynn, p. 25〕〔Sayre p. 41〕 where she excelled in science, Latin,〔Maddox p. 30〕 and sports.〔Maddox, p. 26〕 She also learned German, and became fluent in French, the language she would later find useful. She topped her classes, and won annual awards. Her only educational weakness was in music, for which the school music director Gustav Holst once called upon her mother to inquire whether she might have suffered from hearing problem or tonsillitis.〔Glynn, p. 28〕 With six distinctions, she passed her matriculation in 1938, winning a scholarship for college, the School Leaving Exhibition of £30 a year for three years, and ₤5 from her grandfather.〔Glynn, p. 30〕 Her father asked her to give the scholarship to deserving refugee student.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rosalind Franklin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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