Editing Rosalind Franklin (section)

===Birkbeck College===
[[File:TMV virus under magnification.jpg|right|thumb|An [[Micrograph#Electron micrograph|electron micrograph]] of [[tobacco mosaic virus]]]]

Franklin left King's College London in mid-March 1953 for [[Birkbeck College]], in a move that had been planned for some time and that she described (in a letter to Adrienne Weill in Paris) as "moving from a palace to the slums&nbsp;... but pleasanter all the same".<ref>Maddox, p. 205.</ref> She was recruited by physics department chair John Desmond Bernal,<ref>Maddox, p. 229.</ref> a crystallographer who was a communist, known for promoting female crystallographers. Her new laboratories were housed in 21 Torrington Square, one of a pair of dilapidated and cramped Georgian houses containing several different departments; Franklin frequently took Bernal to task over the careless attitudes of some of the other laboratory staff, notably on one occasion after workers in the Pharmacy department flooded her first-floor laboratory with water.<ref>Brown, Andrew, ''J. D. Bernal, the sage of science'' (2005), Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 353–355.</ref>

Despite the parting words of Bernal to stop her interest in nucleic acids, Franklin helped Gosling to finish his thesis, although she was no longer his official supervisor. Together, they published the first evidence of double helix in the A form of DNA in the 25 July issue of ''Nature''.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Franklin |first1=RE |last2=Gosling |first2=RG |title=Evidence for 2-chain helix in crystalline structure of sodium deoxyribonucleate. |journal=Nature |year=1953 |volume=172 |issue=4369 |pages=156–157 |doi=10.1038/172156a0 |pmid=13072614 |bibcode=1953Natur.172..156F|s2cid=4169572 }}</ref> At the end of 1954, Bernal secured funding for Franklin from the [[Agricultural Research Council]] (ARC), which enabled her to work as a senior scientist supervising her own research group.<ref>Maddox, p. 235.</ref><ref name="Brown, pp. 356–357">Brown, pp. 356–357.</ref> [[John Thomas Finch|John Finch]], a physics student from [[King's College London]], subsequently joined Franklin's group, followed by [[Kenneth Holmes]], a Cambridge graduate, in July 1955. Despite the ARC funding, Franklin wrote to Bernal that the existing facilities remained highly unsuited for conducting research:
<blockquote>...my desk and lab are on the fourth floor, my X-ray tube in the basement, and I am responsible for the work of four people distributed over the basement, first and second floors on two different staircases.<ref name="Brown, pp. 356–357"/> </blockquote>

====RNA research====
Franklin continued to explore another major nucleic acid, [[RNA]], a molecule equally central to life as [[DNA]]. She again used X-ray crystallography to study the structure of the [[tobacco mosaic virus]] (TMV), an [[RNA virus]]. Her meeting with Aaron Klug in early 1954 led to a longstanding and successful collaboration. Klug had just then earned his PhD from [[Trinity College, Cambridge]], and joined Birkbeck in late 1953. In 1955, Franklin published her first major works on TMV in ''Nature'', where she described that all TMV virus particles were of the same length.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Franklin |first1=RE. |title=Structure of Tobacco Mosaic Virus |journal=Nature |year=1955 |volume=175 |issue=4452 |pages=379–381 |doi=10.1038/175379a0 |pmid=14356181 |bibcode=1955Natur.175..379F|s2cid=1109700 }}</ref> This was in direct contradiction to the ideas of the eminent virologist [[Norman Pirie]], though Franklin's observation ultimately proved correct.<ref>Maddox, p. 252.</ref>

Franklin assigned the study of the complete structure of TMV to her PhD student Holmes. They soon discovered (published in 1956) that the covering of TMV was protein molecules arranged in helices.<ref>Franklin and Holmes, 1956.</ref> Her colleague Klug worked on spherical viruses with his student Finch, with Franklin coordinating and overseeing the work.<ref>Maddox, p. 254.</ref> As a team, from 1956 they started publishing seminal works on TMV,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Franklin |first1=Rosalind E. |last2=Klug |first2=A. |title=The nature of the helical groove on the tobacco mosaic virus particle X-ray diffraction studies |journal=Biochimica et Biophysica Acta |year=1956 |volume=19 |pages=403–416 |doi=10.1016/0006-3002(56)90463-2 |pmid=13315300 |issue=3}}</ref> cucumber virus 4 and [[turnip yellow mosaic virus]].<ref>Franklin ''et al.'', 1958.</ref>

Franklin also had a [[research assistant]], James Watt, subsidised by the [[National Coal Board]] and was now the leader of the ARC group at Birkbeck.<ref>Maddox, p. 256.</ref> The Birkbeck team members continued working on RNA viruses affecting several plants, including potato, turnip, tomato and pea.<ref>Maddox, p. 262.</ref> In 1955 the team was joined by an American post-doctoral student [[Donald Caspar]]. He worked on the precise location of RNA molecules in TMV. In 1956, Caspar and Franklin published individual but complementary papers in the 10 March issue of ''Nature'', in which they showed that the RNA in TMV is wound along the inner surface of the hollow virus.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Franklin |first1=RE |title=Structure of Tobacco Mosaic Virus: Location of the Ribonucleic Acid in the Tobacco Mosaic Virus Particle |journal=Nature |year=1956 |volume=177 |issue=4516 |pages=928–930 |doi=10.1038/177928b0 |bibcode=1956Natur.177..928F|s2cid=4167638 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Casper |first1=D. L. D. |title=Structure of Tobacco Mosaic Virus: Radial Density Distribution in the Tobacco Mosaic Virus Particle |journal=Nature |year=1956 |volume=177 |issue=4516 |page=928 |doi=10.1038/177928a0 |bibcode=1956Natur.177..928C|s2cid=30394190 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Caspar was not an enthusiastic writer, and Franklin had to write the entire manuscript for him.<ref>Maddox, p. 269.</ref>

Franklin's research grant from ARC expired at the end of 1957, and she was never given the full salary proposed by Birkbeck.<ref name="Creager-2008">{{Cite journal|last1=Creager|first1=Angela N. H.|last2=Morgan|first2=Gregory J.|year=2008|title=After the double helix: Rosalind Franklin's research on Tobacco mosaic virus|journal=Isis|volume=99|issue=2|pages=239–272|doi=10.1086/588626|pmid=18702397|s2cid=25741967}}</ref> After Bernal requested ARC chairman [[Lord Rothschild]], she was given a one-year extension ending in March 1958.<ref>Maddox, p. 293.</ref>

[[Expo 58]], the first major international fair after World War II, was to be held in Brussels in 1958.<ref>{{cite web |title=Expo 58 |url=http://users.skynet.be/rentfarm/expo58/ |access-date=21 January 2015 |archive-date=30 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180130171629/http://users.skynet.be/rentfarm/expo58/  }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Devos |first1=Rika |title=Expo 58: the catalyst for Belgium's Welfare State Government complex? |journal=Planning Perspectives |year=2011 |volume=26 |issue=4 |pages=649–659 |doi=10.1080/02665433.2011.599934|bibcode=2011PlPer..26..649D |url=https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1013792/file/6742349.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1013792/file/6742349.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |hdl=1854/LU-1013792 |s2cid=144066750 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> Franklin was invited to make a five-foot high model of TMV, which she started in 1957. Her materials included table tennis balls and plastic bicycle handlebar grips.<ref>{{cite news |title=Behind the picture: Rosalind Franklin and the polio model |work=insight |date=24 July 2013 |url=http://www.insight.mrc.ac.uk/2013/07/24/behind-the-picture-rosalind-franklin-and-the-polio-model/#more-2575 |publisher=Medical Research Council |access-date=21 January 2015 |archive-date=30 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181030132842/https://www.insight.mrc.ac.uk/2013/07/24/behind-the-picture-rosalind-franklin-and-the-polio-model/#more-2575  }}</ref> The Brussels world's fair, with an exhibit of her virus model at the International Science Pavilion, opened on 17 April, one day after she died.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Maddox |first1=Brenda |title=Mother of DNA |url=https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/532/mother-of-dna |work=New Humanist |date=31 May 2007 |access-date=21 January 2015}}</ref>

====Polio virus====

In 1956 Franklin visited the [[University of California, Berkeley]], where colleagues suggested her group research the [[Poliovirus|polio virus]].<ref>Brown, pp. 358–359.</ref> In 1957 she applied for a grant from the United States [[Public Health Service]] of the [[National Institutes of Health]], which approved £10,000 (equivalent to £{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|10000|1957|r=0}}}} in {{Inflation-year|UK}}{{Inflation-fn|UK|df=y}}) for three years, the largest fund ever received at Birkbeck.<ref>Maddox, p. 296.</ref><ref>Glynn, p. 145.</ref> In her grant application, Franklin mentioned her new interest in animal virus research. She obtained Bernal's consent in July 1957, though serious concerns were raised after Franklin disclosed her intentions to research live, instead of killed, polio virus at Birkbeck. Eventually, Bernal arranged for the virus to be safely stored at the [[London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine]] during the group's research. With her group, Franklin then commenced deciphering the structure of the polio virus while it was in a crystalline state. She attempted to mount the virus crystals in capillary tubes for X-ray studies, but was forced to end her work due to her rapidly failing health.<ref>Brown, p. 359.</ref>

After Franklin's death [[Aaron Klug|Klug]] succeeded her as group leader, and he, Finch and Holmes continued researching the structure of the polio virus. They eventually succeeded in obtaining extremely detailed X-ray images of the virus. In June 1959 Klug and Finch published the group's findings, revealing the polio virus to have icosahedral symmetry, and in the same paper suggested the possibility for all spherical viruses to possess the same symmetry, as it permitted the greatest possible number (60) of identical structural units.<ref>Brown, pp. 360–361.</ref> The team moved to the [[Laboratory of Molecular Biology]], Cambridge, in 1962<ref>Glynn, p. 153.</ref> and the old Torrington Square laboratories were demolished four years later, in May 1966.<ref>Brown, p. 466.</ref>