Rosalind Franklin, Girl Geek

Crave at CNET.co.uk has named its Top 10 Girl Geeks. I don’t really know what their point is having a list that includes Paris Hilton (@#!), but at least they know enough to include Rosalind Franklin.

Franklin was an expert in the structure of DNA and viruses and a keen crystallographer. Her uncle also once attacked Winston Churchill with a dog whip (for unrelated reasons). She went to Cambridge University, but wasn’t given a full degree because girls weren’t allowed them at the time. Franklin used X-rays to work out the structure of DNA, eventually discovering that helical crystalline DNA (don’t ask) did not exist. This meant that she was able to scoff in the faces of other scientists who had mistakenly identified this type of DNA — and she went so far as to write a comical obituary for the erroneous DNA. Many people believe she was owed a Nobel Prize, but unfortunately she died of cancer before the nominations.

If nerds and geeks are interchangeable, I vote for the three girl nerds at inkycircus – Anna Gosline, Katie Law, and Anne Casselman. They’re smart and completely irreverent; always taking the piss out of the latest science story.

via Mark Evans

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