The Double Helix Dna ( Deoxyribonucleic Acid ) Structure

Date submitted: October 6th, 2015 The Carleton Biotechnology Prize Assignment 1 Jose Gutierrez-Solana 100975342 Course code: BIOL 1010 A Dear Carleton Prize community, My name is Jose Gutierrez-Solana and I am writing to this panel in regards to a woman, whose contributions to science have gone neglected and somewhat forgotten. A woman, who without her contribution to science we may have been set back, and not have had so many advancements in the 21st century, these contributions were credited to James Watson and Francis Crick. I am talking about no one other than Rosalind Elise Franklin, quite possibly one of the greatest minds of the last century and arguably the biggest step in to creating the double helix DNA†¦show more content†¦Dr. Franklin attended several private schools were she excelled in all her subjects, at the age of 11, she went to Paul s girl s school where she would transcend the average student in science, Latin, and sports. She truly stood out in a time where being a woman would have been an issue in terms of competing or even being taken seriously. Dr. Franklin then went to Cambridge and s tudied chemistry within the natural sciences Tripos where students must study three disciplines. She then graduated in 1942, where she was accepted in to apprenticeships in her university and worked in various departments of the faculty of chemistry. She had a huge contribution in to researching the void fraction of coal and its relationship to helium s density. With this research, she was able to find the relationship of the substances being expelled in order of molecular size as heat went up and vice versa. This lead to being able to precisely predict the performance of coals as fuels as well as classify them. As it turns out, her research on coal and helium was also the topic of her Ph.D paper and solidified her doctoral status. Through assistance from her colleagues, she was able to gain a spot in a group of 15 researchers at the laboratoire central des services chimiques de l etat in Paris, France. Here she was an x--ray crystallographer, where she was able to identify the atom ic and molecular structure of crystals. Dr. Franklin then