Rosalind Franklin

by Brenda Maddox

  She also listened to the radio. For her twenty-first birthday, her aunt, Mamie Bentwich, had given her at her request, ‘a baby wireless . . . the sort that goes off the light’. Up to 50 per cent of the total population listened to the BBC nine o’clock evening news. As winter approached, the Germans were driving towards Moscow and great hope was placed in the RAF’s night raids over Germany. Only the men of Bomber Command knew how inaccurate these were; in the early years of the war, only one bomb in three fell within five miles of the target. One pilot told the Cambridge crystallographer, J.D. Bernal, then serving as Lord Louis Mountbatten’s scientific adviser: ‘You can think it damned lucky, old boy, that we drop the bombs in the right country!’

  In her evening reading, Rosalind tackled the just-published memoir Wanderer Between Two Worlds by her Aunt Mamie’s husband, Norman Bentwich, but did not like it. ‘Considering the experiences and opportunities he’s had, it could have been more interesting,’ she told her parents, ‘and I think the catalogue of leading Jews, nearly all titled, whom he’s met, are most objectionable.’ Impatience with self-indulgent prose prevented her from finishing Virginia Woolf ‘s To the Lighthouse: ‘I like long sentences when well put together, but hers are so arranged that the beginning is meaningless until the end is reached, which I consider quite unjustifiable.’

  When her work was going badly and tension was in the air, however, Rosalind found herself once again ‘quite incapable’ of concentrating as when, early on, she spotted a fundamental error in the project Norrish had given her. Dainton, who had recommended her for the research scholarship and had a high opinion of her ability, agreed that she was right. The long-brewing crisis came to a head early in 1942. Rosalind wrote up a summary of her findings showing why it was impossible to get the result Norrish expected. The professor, however, declined to read what she had written, refused to change his approach and ordered her to repeat the experiments. There was no alternative but a showdown:

  When I stood up to him he became most offensive and we had a first-class row — in fact, several. I have had to give in for the present but I think it is a good thing to have stood up to him for a time and he has made me despise him so completely that I shall be quite impervious to anything he may say to me in the future. He simply gave me an immense feeling of superiority in his presence.

  Confrontation when cornered was Rosalind’s tactic. The alternative — passive acquiescence in something she knew to be wrong — was intolerable, totally contradictory to her faith in the provable truth of science.

  She had been trained in a hard school. A civil servant who was working with Ellis Franklin on refugee applications at the Home Office witnessed the training in action. He was spending a weekend with the Franklins at their temporary home in Radlett, when Rosalind suddenly turned up from Cambridge. She and her father immediately engaged in fierce political debate — ‘he on the right, she on the left’ — in a manner so heated that the visitor, K.C. Paice, thought that Rosalind must be an ‘uncompromising Communist’, which seemed ‘a violent contrast with the extreme luxury in which she appeared to have been raised’. He observed that neither Rosalind nor her father tolerated dissent from their views: Ellis was a ‘domestic martinet’; she was ‘her father’s daughter’. However, the visitor also noted that Rosalind was ‘strikingly good-looking’.

  Many people over the years observed similarities between Rosalind and her father. The same description (in essence, ‘did not suffer fools gladly’) was repeatedly used for one or the other. Yet Ellis Franklin seems to have paid no professional price for combativeness. The same was not true for his daughter.

  Rosalind’s stand did, nonetheless, wring a new project out of Norrish — ‘not thrilling, but it MUST be better than the last’. She also made new friends, thanks to the French scientist she so admired, Adrienne Weill, who had gathered a group of French refugees to live at a hostel near the Cam. Spending time with them, she discovered an unexpected dimension to her personality.

  I don’t know whether I meet here a particularly select French crowd but I always revel in their company. Their standard of everyday conversation is vastly superior to that of any English gathering I have been in and they are all so much more quick-witted and alive — I love listening to their language . . . though I find myself unable to take part, the pace is much too fast for me . . . I’m thinking very seriously of moving to 12 Mill Lane — Mme Weill’s place.

  In the summer of 1942, she had to decide whether to apply for permission to stay on at Cambridge as a research student in a programme that would lead to a PhD or risk being drafted into the Ministry of Supply or some other government agency.

  Ellis Franklin did not like the sound of it: his daughter strolling the groves of academe while his elder sons were putting their lives at risk for their country. Her stay in Cambridge seemed to him like his German year in Breslau. Taking the risk of arousing her fierce temper, he wrote Rosalind what he thought, adding several other complaints on his mind and enclosing the gift of one pound to soften the blow. Return fire was not long in coming. ‘Dear Father,’ she began, on 1 June 1942, ‘I certainly don’t resent criticism as such.’ But:

  On one point you are quite unjust — I don’t know where you got the idea that I’d ‘complained’ about giving up a PhD for war work. When I first applied to do research here a year ago, I was asked whether I wanted war work, and said I did. I was led to believe that the first problem I had was war work. I soon found that I had been deceived, and since then have made repeated requests to Norrish for war work — it’s one of the many things over which we have differed — and I have explicitly stated on several occasions against the advice of my elders and betters, that I would rather have war work now and a PhD later.

  Another way in which she had offended him was by saying that her mother’s life was dull. She was sorry but rather than apologising, stood her ground: ‘I am extremely sorry that it should be so, but, as you say, she is tied to the house most of the time, doing all sorts of domestic work alone, and I can’t see how it can be anything but dull . . .’

  She herself was bored with her work, she said. She despised her professor and disliked her colleagues who ‘resent and generally ignore my presence’. Therefore, it should not be surprising that she was, as he accused her, thrown back upon herself. In any event, her life at present bore little resemblance to his at Breslau.

  Diversion in a difficult time was once more supplied by members of her family. Twelve-year-old Jenifer came for a visit and Rosalind put herself out to give her sister a good time — indeed, providing one of the most memorable weekends of Jenifer’s childhood. Rosalind showed her sister the grand buildings of Cambridge as well as her own laboratory where she demonstrated blowing and assembling glassware. They then went to see the wartime epic, 49th Parallel, starring Laurence Olivier and Leslie Howard. On another occasion her aunt, Mamie Bentwich, accepted being put up in ‘a room full of junk and two beds kept for casual visitors’. In the evening they went to the theatre and at breakfast sat in their dressing gowns and gossiped. Mamie reassured Rosalind that the war, in spite of the German advance on Moscow, would not last for another ten years.

  At the end of the summer Rosalind packed up her wireless and shifted herself away from the bleak room near the station and down to 12 Mill Lane, to join Adrienne Weill’s small hostel. She hesitated slightly before moving. She knew enough about herself to know that she liked people better when she didn’t have to live with them. However, she felt that she had become a more tolerant person, although she knew, she said, her parents would not agree.

  Adrienne Weill remained impressive. The French scientist was now working at the Cavendish Laboratory on a salary from the Ministry of Supply, thanks to the ingenuity of the Cavendish’s director, Lawrence Bragg, who found her a subject that could be considered war work but not too secret to be dealt with by a foreigner. For Rosalind the chance to speak French on a daily basis was hard to resist, and she soon decided she had found the id
eal existence. She got along well with the other members of the hostel. Marianne Weill, Adrienne’s daughter, studying at the Perse School in Cambridge, formed a teenager’s view of Rosalind: ‘she was extremely kind, good and serious; you didn’t see her smile very often’.

  The move to Mill Lane coincided with Rosalind’s twenty- second birthday and a parental deposit of five pounds in the bank, for which she was grateful: ‘as I can never see it so shan’t know when it’s gone, and will therefore feel justified in spending anything on everything for ever’.

  So should she stay in Cambridge? The choice was between applying for permission to stay on, continue research and work towards her doctorate. Or to see what jobs might be offered her in the wartime lottery: the Ministry of Fuel or Ministry of Supply, or even women’s military service. The decision was forced by an announcement from the Ministry of Labour that all women research students, even those doing war-related work, were to be ‘de-reserved’ — that is, made eligible to be called into military service. Rosalind, who never complained about inequality of treatment of the sexes, was surprised that all male researchers of comparable status were to be allowed to keep on with their university work. Norrish astonished her by urging her to apply to remain ‘reserved’ and thus able to stay on. Recognising (although he never told her directly) that she was a brilliant experimentalist, he painted a bleak picture of the horrors of industry. ‘I could hardly keep from smiling,’ she told her mother. Working with a commercial company might be tolerable, but not if the war dragged on for years:

  In industry there undoubtedly are better jobs but they never go to women. If it’s only a matter of a year or so it doesn’t much matter, but if it’s 5 or 10 — it probably would be better here. I favour Cambridge . . . if the job offered is reasonable. As long as one stays in a university — even on a utilitarian work — it is science for knowledge — I’m so afraid that in industry, I should find only science for money.

  It was not easy to find the right environment in which to continue physical chemistry. Rosalind, struggling with all scientists’ problem of conveying the substance of their work to family and friends, tried to explain to her parents that her particular line of research needed probably more apparatus than any other branch of chemistry. She had for her exclusive use about £100 worth of equipment, many more thousands of pounds’ worth at her disposal — ‘and a daily supply of liquid air is essential!’

  The situation resolved itself in the form of a chance to do research in a government laboratory in the borough of Kingstonupon-Thames, on the southwestern edge of London. To Rosalind, a Londoner, the suburbs were as unappealing as the provinces. To her parents, who had now reoccupied their old home in Bays- water, she said she would take the job if it were offered.

  I think the work sounds not too bad, but I don’t like the idea of the place — miles from anything, without even the consolation of a lunch-hour in town — it’ll be lunch in the lab, with lab people, all horribly shut off. But the alternatives are probably worse. I did not seriously consider the Ministry of Fuel job. I’m sure I should be very much more efficient in administrative work, but I should lose touch and never be able to go back to lab work, which would be much more exciting if only one could succeed.

  She felt she had failed twice in Cambridge — in not getting a first-class degree and not achieving anything in her work with Norrish. When in August 1942 she accepted the job in Kingston, Dainton, who now knew her better, thought she was absolutely right to get out. Married that year, he and his wife, a zoologist from Newnham, were touched by the care and skill Rosalind took in choosing a wedding present she knew they would like. He thought it a tragedy that she had had to work for Norrish, with whom nobody could get along at that period in his life. In any case, she now had something that met all requirements: her own, her father’s and her country’s.

  If she had had an ideal existence before, she improved on it now: a large house on Putney Common, shared with her cousin Irene Franklin and a friend, with a small private garden, a daily woman to help with the cleaning, and the rest left to themselves. As Rosalind had the shortest working hours, she did most of the housekeeping and cooking. Despite what she had said about her mother’s life, she thoroughly enjoyed housewifery. She wrote to their young former Austrian lodger, Evi Eisenstadter Ellis, now living in Chicago (where the family, changing their name, chose ‘Ellis’ as a surname out of respect for Ellis Franklin who had saved their lives). ‘Even washing-up ceases to be unpleasant,’ she said, ‘when you do it in your own place and at your own convenience.’

  Peace of mind came from a satisfying job at last. The new British Coal Utilisation Research Association (BCURA) under its first director, Dr D.H. Bangham, had assembled a staff of graduate physicists direct from universities to study coal and charcoal. At BCURA (pronounced ‘B’Cura’ by those who worked there) young researchers were allowed to do original work in a way that would not have been possible before the war. (Charcoal, used in gas masks during the First World War, had saved thousands of lives and was a component in the masks that Rosalind and other students carried in Cambridge.)

  Most British coal is derived from fern-like carboniferous plants which are transformed by degrees towards almost inorganic coal by squeezing — the process of ‘coalification’. The question Rosalind now addressed was why some kinds of coal are much more impervious to penetration by gas or water than others. She worked on bituminous and anthracite coals from Kent, northeast England, South Wales and Ireland. Using helium to see how much could pass through the imperceptible apertures in the various cellular structures, she tested the change in porosity under temperatures as high as 1,000° Celsius. She had apparatus galore - lamps, rollers, furnaces and a good supply of dry nitrogen — to conduct her experiments. As she lowered the temperature and raised it again, measuring the shrinkage in coals and carbons, she developed theories that would make her international reputation.

  With the title of Assistant Research Officer, she had a fairly authoritative way about her. One day when she went into the machine shop — a vital spot in any laboratory reliant on big apparatus — and found signs declaring it out of bounds to noncertified personnel, she simply turned the signs around, and used the equipment anyway.

  At home in Putney, Rosalind and Irene volunteered as air raid wardens. Their duties consisted of inspecting the blackout - wearing tin hats and cycling or walking around their assigned patch, looking for violations — or sitting in the ‘Post’ for two-hour stints. Rosalind was fearless, up to a point. She was bold in venturing alone across the dark open common during an air raid, but glad that it was Irene and not she who had to go into a bombed-out house to rescue people trapped in the cellar. Irene blamed her cousin’s claustrophobia yet admired Rosalind’s courage in walking across the common, as she herself was too scared to do that. In many ways, from Irene’s point of view, Rosalind was ‘too good at everything: work, sport, looks, cooking’.

  Strenuous, even dangerous, holidays were Rosalind’s relaxation. In the summer of 1943 or 1944, with her old friend Anne Crawford, she went climbing in Snowdonia, North Wales. The predictable crisis arrived; the mist came down as they were halfway up the ridge of Crib Goch, with steep drops on either side. Anne inched her way to safety — ‘driven more by my fear of Rosalind’s tongue than of falling over the edge’. Rosalind’s ability to retain close friends in spite of her capacity for scorn was remarkable.

  On another holiday in North Wales, this time with Jean Kerslake, they tackled the highest peaks in the same spirit in which they had paced each other at St Paul’s Girls’ School. One day the pair set off on a ten-mile walk to the shores of Llyn Dinas. When they arrived, they encountered two young foresters who were living in a caravan nearby. The men gave them a lift and announced themselves as Welsh nationalists. ‘There are only two of us,’ they said, ‘but it is a beginning.’ In the hot sun, the lake looked inviting. None of them had a bathing suit so they stripped off and swam naked. Rosalind did not hesitate. Her
attitude, to Jean, was ‘She wanted a swim, so she had one.’

  The quartet repeated the escapade the next day, cycling down to the coast at Criccieth where they swam, again without burden of suits. Even so, when Jean and one of the young men took a fancy to each other and hung behind, they returned to the caravan to find an annoyed and puzzled Rosalind, waiting with the other young man. She seemed not to comprehend why the two had wanted to be alone.

  The Putney ménage broke up at the end of 1943. Rosalind had been living at home for a time because of an attack of jaundice; Irene had married and was expecting a baby (or in Ellis Franklin’s arch words, ‘Irene will be taking on the duties of motherhood in the spring’). He looked forward to having Rosalind remain under his roof, and told his son Colin, serving with the Royal Navy in the Far East, ‘the house will be that much the brighter’.

  Commuting out to Kingston and back every day meant a long slow journey but she was glad of the shelter and solidity of the family home during the new round of air raids. The first of the V-is — pilotless flying bombs — struck on 12 June 1944, and just after D-Day, and on 8 September, the first V-2s. ‘Of course for anyone who suffers directly, any type of bomb is equally bad,’ Rosalind commented to Evi, safe in the United States. ‘But I think most people agree that for those who are not hit, the present type of raid is much less worrying than the older variety.’ Her young sister Jenifer moved out to Chartridge, Irene and her new baby in the flat over the garage. Rosalind joined them at weekends and was surprised to see her young sister’s intuitive gift for holding the infant and calming its crying.