Rosalind Franklin picked by Kate Bingham, former head of the UK government's vaccine taskforce

Great Lives

BBC

History, Documentary, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Rosalind Franklin was born in 1920 and studied Natural Sciences. After working in Paris at the Laboratoire Central - where she became an x-ray crystallographer - she moved to King's College London. Here she helped to take the famous Photograph 51 which led to the discovery of the double helix shape of DNA. Her contribution was famously and disgracefully downplayed by the men who won the Nobel Prize. Later at Birkbeck College she undertook pioneering work of the structure of viruses before dying of ovarian cancer, aged just 37. Nominating Rosalind Franklin is Kate Bingham. She chaired the UK government's Vaccine Taskforce, and she also attended the same school as Rosalind Franklin - St Paul's Girls' School in London. Further contributions from Dr Patricia Fara of Clare College, Cambridge, and Howard Bailes, archivist of St Paul's School. Archive contributors include Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Colin Franklin. The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Ever wondered what the world's wealthiest people did to get so ridiculously rich?
0:05.5	Our podcast Good Bad Billionaire takes one billionaire at a time and explains exactly how they made their money.
0:11.9	And then we decide if they are actually good, bad or just plain wealthy.
0:15.5	So if you want to know if Rihanna is as much of a bad guy as she claims,
0:19.2	or what Jeff Bezos really did to become the first person in history to pocket $100 billion,
0:24.6	listen to Good Bad Billionaire with me, Simon Jack, and me, Zinc Zinc.
0:28.5	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.9	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:36.9	Today's guest was chair of the UK Government's Vaccine Task Force set up in 2020
0:43.2	to find and manufacture a COVID-19 vaccine.
0:47.4	On the Government's own website, it said that she was uniquely qualified for the role
0:52.7	and that her work had led to the launch of six drugs
0:55.6	for the treatment of autoimmune disease and cancer.
0:59.2	And she it was who placed all those early orders for COVID vaccines
1:03.9	while they were still only under development, so Britain got ahead of the queue.
1:08.2	Dame Kate Bingham, welcome to Great Lives.
1:11.6	Whom have you picked and why?
1:14.1	I've picked Rosalind Franklin.
1:16.8	She is a phenomenal scientist and actually it's rather shocking
1:20.4	that she's not been on this programme before.
1:22.6	So there are three key reasons.
1:24.6	She's an amazing scientist at determining atomic structure
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.