Friday - March 19
March brings Women’s History Month and we will be recognizing a special woman each day during our announcements. Today we are recognizing:
Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite.
Franklin attended St. Paul’s Girls’ School before studying physical chemistry at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. After graduating in 1941, she received a fellowship to conduct research in physical chemistry at Cambridge. But the advance of World War II changed her course of action: not only did she serve as a London air raid warden, but in 1942 she gave up her fellowship in order to work for the British Coal Utilisation Research Association, where she investigated the physical chemistry of carbon and coal for the war effort. Nevertheless, she was able to use this research for her doctoral thesis, and in 1945 she received a doctorate from Cambridge. From 1947 to 1950 she worked with Jacques Méring at the State Chemical Laboratory in Paris, studying X-ray diffraction technology. That work led to her research on the structural changes caused by the formation of graphite in heated carbons—work that proved valuable for the coal industry.
In 1951 Franklin joined the Biophysical Laboratory at King’s College, London, as a research fellow. There she applied X-ray diffraction methods to the study of DNA. When she began her research at King’s College, very little was known about the chemical makeup or structure of DNA. However, she soon discovered the density of DNA and, more importantly, established that the molecule existed in a helical conformation. Her work to make clearer X-ray patterns of DNA molecules laid the foundation for James Watson and Francis Crick to suggest in 1953 that the structure of DNA is a double-helix polymer, a spiral consisting of two DNA strands wound around each other.
From 1953 to 1958 Franklin worked in the Crystallography Laboratory at Birkbeck College, London. While there she completed her work on coals and on DNA and began a project on the molecular structure of the tobacco mosaic virus. She collaborated on studies showing that the ribonucleic acid (RNA) in that virus was embedded in its protein rather than in its central cavity and that this RNA was a single-strand helix, rather than the double helix found in the DNA of bacterial viruses and higher organisms. Franklin’s involvement in cutting-edge DNA research was halted by her untimely death from cancer in 1958.
6th, 7th, and 8th-grade students. If you are interested in going out for Soccer and/or Track and Field after school, after spring break, then please make sure to visit the Powell Website' Athletic's page. There you will find a link to sign up for Track & Field and Soccer for the remainder of the year. Both events will be intramural events (no games against other schools), will start the week of April 5th, will be after school from 4:00 pm-5:00 pm, and the seasons will run through the week of May 10th. Late buses won't run until the week of April 12th, so the first week you will need to have a ride home after practice. You don't need to have any experience in either sport to participate. Please fill out the form on the PMS website as soon as possible, and also pick up a participation emergency card during your lunch this week! Both the online form and the participation card need to be completed by Friday, April 2nd. We hope to see as many of you out there as we can the week of April 5th! Go Pumas!