11 and 22 for the science asks!
11. Who’s your favorite scientist?Rosalind Franklin.
For those of you who don’t know, the two people who are credited with the discovery of our current model of DNA are Watson and Crick - the model is the Watson-Crick model. However, their research was entirely theoretical, and Franklin’s experimental data was crucial in the acceptance of the model as scientifically sound. Franklin captured images of DNA using a method known as X-ray crystallography. As we now know, X-rays lead to increased rates of cancer. What did Franklin die of? Ovarian cancer. The pièce de resistance? Watson and Crick were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for their work with DNA. Franklin was already dead by the time the prize was awarded, and Nobel Prizes aren’t awarded post-humously, so she missed out on one of science’s largest honors.
So basically: she did amazing, revolutionary work that caused her to die young (she was 37 years old when she died), but never got any credit for it. My professors still regularly forget her name, or call her “the woman who took the pictures”. I’m salty and Rosalind Franklin deserved better.
22. What is your favorite scientific theory?All of them. Epigenetics isn’t exactly a theory, but it’s the study of how our DNA is changed throughout our lifetime, and I find it entirely fascinating.
