Rosalind Franklin - Illness and Death

Illness and Death

In the summer of 1956, while on a work-related trip to the United States, Franklin first began to suspect a health problem—she found she could no longer do up her skirt because of a lump around her abdomen. An operation in September of the same year revealed two tumours in her abdomen. After this period and other periods of hospitalization, Franklin spent time convalescing with various friends and family members. These included Anne Sayre, Francis Crick, his wife Odile, with whom Franklin had formed a strong friendship, and finally with the Roland and Nina Franklin family where Rosalind's nieces and nephews bolstered her spirits. Franklin chose not to stay with her parents because her mother's uncontrollable grief and crying upset her too much. Even while undergoing cancer treatment, Franklin continued to work, and her group continued to produce results, seven papers in 1956 and six more in 1957. In 1957, the group was also working on the polio virus and had obtained funding from the Public Health Service of the National Institutes of Health in the United States for this.

At the end of 1957, Franklin again fell ill and she was admitted to the Royal Marsden Hospital. She returned to work in January 1958, and she was given a promotion to Research Associate in Biophysics. She fell ill again on March 30, and she died on April 16, 1958, in Chelsea, London, of bronchopneumonia, secondary carcinomatosis, and ovarian cancer. Exposure to X-ray radiation is sometimes considered to be a possible factor in her illness. Other members of her family have died of cancer, and the incidence of gynaecological cancer is known to be disproportionately high among Ashkenazi Jews. Her death certificate read: A Research Scientist, Spinster, Daughter of Ellis Arthur Franklin, a Banker.