Friday 2 June 2017

Person/Expert you admire

The greatest contributors to science have always been men and they have always been rewarded for their discoveries since ancient times, but women have also contributed a lot to science, for example, Maria Curie, Jane Goodall, Emmy Noether, or Barbara McClintock, she discovered the transposition – genes moving about within chromosomes – often described as jumping genes, and showed that genes are responsible for switching the physical traits of an organism on or off, but for a long time his works were not taken into account, 30 years later he was awarded the Nobel Prize...30 years!! is something I still can not believe!

But the most emblematic and admirable case for me is the Rosalind Franklin. She was born on July 25, 1920 in London, the second of five brothers, three of them men, in a Jewish family that had four generations dedicated to the banking. At age 18 she passed the entrance exam at Newnham College in Cambridge to study experimental sciences and, in particular, chemistry.  Her father did not accept Rosalind's decision and took away her support of money, however, but his aunt paid his studies, and so she graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1941. She learned crystallography and X-ray diffraction, techniques that she applied to DNA fibers. One of her photographs (Known as photograph 51) provided key insights into DNA structure. But, Other scientists (Watson and Crick) used it as evidence to support their DNA model and took credit for the discovery, who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1962. 
Rosalind Franklin never received any recognition in life, on the contrary, Watson and Crick almost never mentioned it, but that was not an impediment to continue looking for the answer to questions that were unimaginable, teither was her father an impediment for her to study! For these and many other reasons as her discoveries is that she is a woman to admire ... we must always look for ways to produce knowledge regardless of the difficulties that are put in the way or the prizes that one can receive for it .

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