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Rosalind Franklin is famous in the history of science for her contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA, the start of the greatest biological revolution of the twentieth century. Much has been written about the importance of her part, and about how her work was affected by her position as a woman scientist. Above all she was a distinguished scientist, not only in her work on DNA, but also in her earlier work on coals and carbons and in her later work on viruses.In this family memoir her sister, the writer and historian Jenifer Glynn, paints a full picture of Rosalind's life. Looking at Rosalind's background; her early education, her time as a science student at Cambridge, and her relations with her family, to her life as an adult and her time in Paris and at King's, Glynn shows how much her sister achieved and how she was influenced by the social and intellectual climate of the period she worked in.
This memoir investigates the personal life and professional trajectory of Rosalind Franklin, seeking to move beyond the singular focus on her DNA research to present a holistic portrait of her scientific career. Jenifer Glynn, Franklin's sister and a historian, utilizes personal family archives, correspondence, and her own intimate knowledge of the subject to contextualize Franklin's achievements. The book argues that Franklin's scientific contributions were shaped by both her rigorous intellectual upbringing and the specific social constraints placed upon women in mid-twentieth-century academia.
What You Will Find
Experts and historians value this text for providing a necessary humanizing perspective on a figure often reduced to a single scientific controversy. Readers frequently note that the prose is accessible and provides a balanced view of Franklin's character that is absent from more technical accounts of the DNA discovery.
Page Count:
172
Publication Date:
2012-04-30
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0199699623
ISBN-13:
9780199699629
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