New Medal Named for Rosalind Franklin

The UK is honoring crystallographer Rosalind Franklin (1920–58) by creating a medal in her name to recognize innovations in science. Franklin’s research was largely ignored during her lifetime, but is now widely accepted as having been key to discovering the structure of DNA. The new medal—the Royal Society’s first to carry a woman’s name—has a purse worth £30 000 (approximately $42 000).

Franklin died four years before the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Francis H. C. Crick, James D. Watson, and Maurice H. F. Wilkins for the discovery of the structure of DNA. “It has been a long haul to bring Rosalind’s contribution into the light of day,” says the University of Cambridge’s Joan Mason, who has given lectures on Franklin’s research. Watson, now at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York State, agrees: “It’s a great idea, not just honoring a woman, or a crystallographer, but also the memory of a fantastic scientist and a good friend.”

But according to Franklin biographer Lynne Elkin of California State University, Hayward, Watson and Crick did not give Franklin’s contribution its due in their seminal 1953 Nature article. She says that it was not until years later, in his book The Double Helix (first edition, Atheneum, 1968), that Watson clearly acknowledged the debt he and Crick owed Franklin. Even then, says Elkin, the Franklin described in Watson’s book “is unrecognizable by anyone who knew her.”

The new medal, which will be presented annually, is open to all UK researchers, male and female. It has one of the largest monetary values of any UK award. That, along with the prestige associated with winning the medal, will “help other brilliant women scientists get the acknowledgment they deserve in their lifetimes,” says Patricia Hewitt, the UK’s secretary of state for trade and industry. Details on the medal can be found on the Royal Society Web site at http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk . The inaugural medal will be bestowed next year to coincide with the 50th publishing anniversary of Crick and Watson’s Nature article.