Campus Iguana Has New Name

….. And the Winner is – Rosalind Franklin.

When the polls closed at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 4, the ballots were counted (with four witnesses) and the winner was Rosalind Franklin. Feel free to stop by between finals or before summer break to say “Hello Rosalind!”

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, her contributions to the discovery of DNA were largely recognized posthumously. Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA while at King’s College, London, which led to the discovery of the DNA double helix for which James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Watson suggested that Franklin would have ideally been awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Wilkins, but the Nobel Committee does not make posthumous nominations. (Information copied from Wikipedia)