With a Royal Mail commemorative stamp, an award winning portrayal by actress Nicole Kidman in a recent hit West End play, and a Mars rover named in her honour, scientist Rosalind Franklin whose X-ray studies were crucial to unravelling the double-helical structure of DNA, thankfully, no longer quite the unsung heroine of the DNA story that she once was.
Until very recently, I would have argued that this title should now pass to physicist Florence Bell who, whilst working at the University of Leeds in 1938, showed for the first time that X-ray methods could be used to reveal the regular, ordered structure of DNA. In so doing, Bell paved the way for Franklin’s later work but she’s been largely forgotten by history…until now…
For when the new Bragg building was officially opened earlier this week for the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds, UK, I was delighted that Florence Bell was honoured with a seminar room named after her. Not quite a Mars rover yet – but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step…