Editing Rosalind Franklin (section)

===Cambridge and World War II===
Franklin went to [[Newnham College, Cambridge]], in 1938 and studied chemistry within the [[Natural Sciences Tripos]]. There, she met the [[Spectroscopy|spectroscopist]] [[Bill Price (physicist)|Bill Price]], who worked with her as a laboratory demonstrator and who later became one of her senior colleagues at King's College London.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Dixon |first1=R. N. |author2=D. M. Agar |author3=R. E. Burge |title=William Charles Price. 1 April 1909−−10 March 1993 |journal=[[Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society]] |year=1997 |volume=43 |page=438 |doi=10.1098/rsbm.1997.0023 |jstor=770344|doi-access=free }}</ref> In 1941 Franklin was awarded [[second-class honours]] from her final exams. The distinction was accepted as a bachelor's degree in qualifications for employment. Cambridge began awarding titular [[Bachelor of Arts|BA]] and [[Master of Arts (Oxbridge and Dublin)|MA]] degrees to women from 1947 and the previous women graduates retroactively received these earned degrees.<ref>''Fact sheet: Women at Cambridge: A Chronology'', [http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/press/factsheets/women2.html]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120114162700/http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/press/factsheets/women2.html|date=14 January 2012}}</ref>  In her last year at Cambridge, Franklin met a French refugee Adrienne Weill, a former student of [[Marie Curie]], who had a huge influence on her life and career and who helped her to improve her conversational French.<ref>Polcovar, p. 31.</ref><ref>Williams, p. 279</ref>

Franklin was awarded a research fellowship at Newnham College, with which she joined the physical chemistry laboratory of the [[University of Cambridge]] to work under [[Ronald George Wreyford Norrish]], who later won the [[Nobel Prize in Chemistry]]. In her one year of work there, Franklin did not have much success.<ref>''Rosalind Franklin'', Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's Dolan DNA Learning Center, ID 1649, [http://www.dnalc.org/view/16049-Rosalind-Franklin-.html] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180903045728/https://www.dnalc.org/view/16049-Rosalind-Franklin-.html|date=3 September 2018}}.</ref> As described by his biographer, Norrish was "obstinate and almost perverse in argument, overbearing and sensitive to criticism".<ref>{{cite journal |title=Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, 9 November 1897 – 7 June 1978 |last1=Dainton |first1=Sir Frederick Sydney |journal=[[Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society]] |year=1981 |volume=27 |pages=379–424 |doi=10.1098/rsbm.1981.0016 |jstor=769878|s2cid=72584163 |doi-access=free }}</ref> He could not decide upon the assignment of work for her. At that time Norrish was succumbing due to heavy drinking. Franklin wrote that he made her despise him completely.<ref>Maddox, p. 72.</ref>

Resigning from Norrish's Lab, Franklin fulfilled the requirements of the [[Conscription in the United Kingdom|National Service Acts]] by working as an assistant research officer at the [[British Coal Utilisation Research Association]] (BCURA) in 1942.<ref name="Profile" /> The BCURA was located on the Coombe Springs Estate near [[Kingston upon Thames]] near the southwestern boundary of London. Norrish acted as advisor to the military at BCURA. [[John G. Bennett]] was the director. [[Marcello Pirani]] and [[Victor Goldschmidt]], both refugees from the Nazis, were consultants and lectured at BCURA while Franklin worked there.<ref name="nlm-coal" />

During her BCURA research Franklin initially stayed at Adrienne Weill's boarding house in Cambridge until her cousin, Irene Franklin, proposed that they share living quarters at a vacated house in [[Putney]] that belonged to her uncle. With Irene, Rosalind volunteered as an [[Air Raid Warden]] and regularly made patrols to see the welfare of people during air raids.<ref>Polcovar, p. 37.</ref>

Franklin studied the [[porosity]] of coal using helium to determine its density.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Harris |first1=P.J.F. |title=Rosalind Franklin's work on coal, carbon, and graphite |journal=Interdisciplinary Science Reviews |date=March 2001 |volume=26 |issue=3 |pages=204–210 |doi=10.1179/030801801679467 |bibcode=2001ISRv...26..204H |s2cid=269381 |url=http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~scsharip/REF_paper.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~scsharip/REF_paper.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live}}</ref> Through this, she discovered the relationship between the fine constrictions in the pores of coals and the permeability of the porous space. By concluding that substances were expelled in order of molecular size as temperature increased, she helped classify coals and accurately predict their performance for fuel purposes and for production of wartime devices such as [[gas masks]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/KR/p-nid/186 |title=The Rosalind Franklin Papers: The Holes in Coal: Research at BCURA and in Paris, 1942–1951 |publisher=Profiles.nlm.nih.gov |access-date=25 July 2013}}</ref> This work was the basis of Franklin's PhD thesis ''The physical chemistry of solid organic [[colloid]]s with special reference to coal'' for which the University of Cambridge awarded her a PhD in 1945.<ref name=thesis>{{cite thesis|first=Rosalind|last=Franklin|title=The physical chemistry of solid organic colloids, with special reference to the structure of coal and related materials|publisher=University of Cambridge|degree=PhD|url=http://ulmss-newton.lib.cam.ac.uk/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=29488|id={{EThOS|uk.bl.ethos.599181}}|year=1946|oclc=879396430}}</ref> It was also the basis of several papers.<ref name="nlm-coal" />