Hello and welcome to Herstory not history, talking about ladies' lives you see.
I am so proud to introduce a woman of course, biologist, crystallographer and some woman
who wasn't allowed to eat lunch with her colleagues and not just because she was one of those
weird people who brought milk to the table every day.
Please welcome Rosalind Franklin.
Hello I'm--Hello, hello, hello, hello, welcome Rosalind to the show.
First of all thank you so much for having me on Herstory.
I've really been looking forward to it.
My name's Rosalind Franklin, I think you've already said it umm, sung it.
Tell me and tell this camera here what exactly did you do?
Aside from being a lovely woman who wears a strand of pearls like she's paid to do it.
It was really my research that laid the groundwork for discovering the double helix structure
of deoxyribonucleic acid aka DNA.
Oh well that sounds incredibly complicated.
Yes.
I don't know how on Earth you managed to even do that--I did do that--how you determined
the structure of DNA much less were even able to successfully pronounce the word deo--umm.
Let me look at--deo, um dio, um, uh, d-deo-ri, deo-ri, di-ri, deoxy--di-rionixo--ribonucleic--deo,
dia--ribonucleic--vagina.
Vagin--vagina.
No.
Hello, hello, hello, hello, give me a moment to pause the show.
You are the smarty pants here, not me, even though I'm wearing my smarty pants [laughter].
Mmm.
What I did was take what would be known as x-ray photographs of DNA using something called
an x-ray diffraction technique.
I don't want to come across as having a large head about it or anything like that but I
will say that my x-ray photographs were called the most beautiful x-ray photographs of any
substance ever taken.
Ever.
Forward, backward.
Ever.
That is amazing.
I don't entirely understand what it means but I do understand that when you were fifteen
years old, but fifteen, you decided that you wanted to be a scientist.
Oh my when I was fifteen the only thing on my mind was boys.
How I could kiss a boy.
Still haven't figured it out.
Your parents must have been--must have been so proud.
Uh, actually no, um, I mean my father I'm sure was proud of me in his own way but at
the time he really did not approve of women getting a secondary education like that, especially
not something like science.
He thought it would be more proper for a woman to become a social worker.
Very set in his ways as we might say kindly when speaking of a sexist.
Oh social worker?
That sounds perfectly respectable.
I know, I know, well I know one.
She is a delight, but a bit of a gossip.
I have nothing against social workers.
Now Rosalind that sounds very tough and it reminds me of when I told my father, I said,
'Daddy.
I want to start this show and it's going to be called "Herstory".'
And he said to me, 'Her what?'
'"Herstory" you know daddy, like history but herstory."
And he said, 'You feminist spinster.
Go home.'
Well I was home so I went to my room.
It must have really gotten better once you got to college and were just surrounded by
men, I bet you looked great in a labcoat.
Did you do one of those movie makeover things where you had glasses but you didn't actually
need the glasses.
You take the glasses off slowly and maybe you unpinned your bun--I would never have
taken my hair down--and your professor sees you across the way and he goes, 'Rosalind
my goodness I've never noticed you standing there before.'
Well first of all I didn't, I did not go to college looking for a husband, I wasn't out
to get my 'MRS'.
I went because I wanted to study physics, chemistry, biology, crystallography, anything
I could get my hands on.
Women were not allowed in Cambridge dining halls.
After we were done in labs, all of my male colleagues which were mostly all of my colleagues
would go to male only pubs.
The men largely did not want me there.
Really could have done without me I think.
Although clearly Watson and Crick could not have done without me.
In 1962 I understand that Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins all won a Nobel
Prize for determining the structure of--the double helix structure of DNA.
Where is your Nobel Prize?
Where do you keep it?
Do you have it on a little necklace?
A broach perhaps?
I never got one.
Hmm?
I never received a Nobel Prize, no.
Because Wilkins without my permission, never once asked, showed my x-ray photographs of
the double helix structure to James Watson who then took it back to Crick and then they
put everything together and lo and behold in 1962, yes they get the Nobel Prize.
Even during that ceremony it could have mattered less because I actually had died a few years
earlier at the age of 37 from ovarian cancer so not only was I cheated out of the highest
prize for science, I got cancer and died.
Oh that's dreadful.
That's dreadful.
But it does not mean that the Nobel Committee could not have given it to me posthumously.
I'm just saying.
So where do I keep my Nobel prize?
The answer is nowhere.
I do not mean to belittle your snub but I will say it sounds like a touch of sour grapes
considering that you were deceased at the time and you know what you say about sour
grapes.
That it turns into wine.
But I suppose that if you are dead you cannot drink I fine merlot.
Well Rosalind Franklin thank you so much for being on our little show.
You're very welcome.
Don't be a stranger.
Do no care to return.
Oh wait no actually you are dead, I keep forgetting, so please do be a stranger for I do not care
to be haunted.
I'm going to haunt you.
Because this was wretched.
I will be lurking in your closet.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, no no friends now do not cry, there's plenty more
Herstory to come.
And we'll have so much fun.