Mars Rover named after female scientist behind DNA discovery
EUROPE’S first Mars Rover will be named after the British female scientist who helped discover DNA but was overshadowed by her male colleagues.
Rosalind Franklin, the English chemist whose groundbreaking “photo 51” enabled James Watson and Francis Crick to decipher DNA’S double helix, will have her name given to the space robot that launches for the Red Planet next year.
The Uk-assembled craft will carry a 6.5ft drill to look for evidence of organisms below the Martian surface in a former ocean bed. Experts working on the project have said the mission has a “50/50” chance of finding life.
Chris Skidmore, the science minister, said yesterday it was “tremendously fitting” that the rover would be named after someone who played a crucial role in understanding the fundamentals of life.
“Just as Franklin overcame many obstacles during her career, I hope ‘Rosalind the rover’ will successfully persevere in this exciting adventure, inspiring generations of female scientists and engineers to come,” he said.
Born in 1920, Franklin was a pioneer in the field of X-ray crystallography. Her pictures provided the insights for Crick and Watson to build the first 3D model of the two-stranded macromolecule, that led to the understanding of DNA as the code for life.
However, her death at the age of 37 from ovarian cancer in 1958 meant she was not considered for a Nobel Prize. Crick, Watson and another colleague Maurice Wilkins received the prize for the breakthrough in 1962.
Her name was picked from more than 36,000 suggestions. Dr Alice Bunn, of the UK Space Agency, said: “Franklin is one of science’s most influential women. It’s fitting that the robot bearing her name will search for the building blocks of life on Mars, as she did so on Earth through her work.”