New Delhi: Today when Google is celebrating the 93rd birthday of the British biophysicist Rosalind Franklin, we bring you some interesting incidents from Rosalind Franklin's life. Jenifer Glynn in her book 'My Sister Rosalind Franklin' describes Rosalind's life, including her education, relations with family and achievements. And the book has helped us in understanding more about Rosalind Franklin. Here are some interesting things to know about her:
1. Some have mentioned that Rosalind Franklin was totally committed to science - with no outside interests - and prepared to give up all ideas of marriage and family, but this was not the case. Glynn tells in her book that she had a great understanding of children and saw plenty of married women who managed to combine careers and families. "She would have been more happy to do the same herself but never found anyone she wanted to marry," mentions Glynn in her book.
2. She loved travelling, and had a great love for mountains.
3. She was waspish, and never used to make friends easily. But when she did, she was outgoing and loyal, tells Glynn in her book .
4. There are a host of websites for Rosalind Franklin on the Internet. Glynn clearly states in her book that some of these website are highly inaccurate, like the those which claim Rosalind Franklin was the only girl in a family of four, and my father was opposed to her going to university or studying science.
5. To know about Rosalind Franklin, the best website to visit is the site produced by the National Library of Medicine, USA, for their 'Profiles in Science collection'. We got to know about this while going through Glynn's 'My Sister Rosalind Franklin'.
6. Rosalind had a good ear for languages, learning some German, as scientists did in those days, because important scientific papers in those days we written in German.
7. But in case of Rosalind Franklin, an ear for music was a different matter, and here she admitted defeat. Poor Gustav Holst, the school music director, asked our mother to come to see him, hoping Rosalind might have some problems with her hearing or her tonsils. Later, Rosalind tried to analyse her feeling about music.
8. Rosalind Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA which in turn led to the discovery of the DNA double helix.
9. She was never a feminist. She had always thought of herself simply as a scientist whose achievements should be judged on their own terms, not as a woman scientist striking a blow for the rights of women.
10. She was from an affluent British Jewish family. Rosalind Franklin died in 1958 of ovarian cancer. She was 37.
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