In this episode of pplpod, we explore the life and legacy of Rosalind Franklin, the brilliant physical chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work helped reveal the structure of DNA. The episode moves beyond the familiar story of the “wronged heroine” and looks at Franklin as a far more complex and accomplished scientist. It traces her upbringing in an intellectually rigorous British Jewish family, her education at St. Paul’s Girls’ School and Cambridge, her wartime research on coal porosity and gas masks, and her transformative years in Paris, where she mastered the difficult art of using X-ray crystallography to study messy, amorphous materials. By the time she arrived at King’s College London, Franklin was already a world-class expert in molecular structure.

The episode also examines the DNA controversy in detail, including Franklin’s  ...