Equality Day lecture: The life and afterlives of Rosalind Franklin - a wronged heroine of science?

Rosalind Franklin is remembered primarily for her contribution to the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA (1953). The discovery – one of the best known and most consequential in twentieth-century biochemistry, was attributed to Francis Crick and James Watson, while Franklin did not share in the Nobel prize and was portrayed in a very ungenerous light by Watson in his influential account of the discovery. During the past decades, however, Franklin has been transformed from a relatively marginal figure into a very well-known one. She is the subject of several serious biographies (and a host of popular compilations), a protagonist of a research-based feature film and a series of documentaries. Her likenesses are displayed in the National Portrait Gallery and in museum shop fridge magnets. For many, she personifies the way that women’s contributions have been marginalised by male colleagues, popular science writers and historians.

The lecture discusses Rosalind Franklin life and afterlives, asking how the posthumous reputation of a scientist is (re)constructed and what biographies can – and cannot – tell us about gender equality in science.

Your lecturer:

Heini Hakosalo is Senior Research Fellow (Associate Professor) in History of Sciences and Ideas, University of Oulu. She specialises in modern and contemporary history of medicine and health. Her interests include gender and science, the histories of infectious diseases and epidemiological knowledge-production, as well as the relationship between health and the built environment. Her publications include Heini Hakosalo, Katariina Parhi and Annukka Sailo (eds.), Historical Explorations of Modern Epidemiology: Patterns, Populations and Pathologies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) and Heini Hakosalo and Esa Ruuskanen (eds.), In Pursuit of Healthy Environments: Lessons from Historical Cases on the Environment-Health Nexus (Routledge, 2021).

Event is organized by the I4WORLD (Imaging and Characterisation for a Sustainable World) doctoral programme co-funded by the European Union.