Rosalind Franklin - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Franklin was born in Notting Hill, London, into an affluent and influential British Jewish family. Her father was Ellis Arthur Franklin (1894–1964), a London merchant banker, and her mother was Muriel Frances Waley (1894–1976). Rosalind was the elder daughter, and the second child of the family of five children. Her father's uncle was Herbert Samuel (later Viscount Samuel) who was the Home Secretary in 1916 and the first practising Jew to serve in the British Cabinet. He was also the first High Commissioner (the effective governor) for the British Mandate of Palestine. Her aunt Helen Carolin Franklin was married to Norman de Mattos Bentwich, who was the Attorney General in the British Mandate of Palestine. She was active in trade union organisation and the women's suffrage movement, and was later a member of the London County Council.

Despite being raised in a Jewish family, Franklin later became an agnostic. From early childhood she showed exceptional scholastic abilities.

Franklin was educated at St Paul's Girls' School where she excelled in science, Latin and sports. Her family was actively involved with a Working Men's College, where Ellis Franklin, her father, taught electricity, magnetism, and the history of the Great War in the evenings and later became the vice-principal. Later Franklin's family helped settle Jewish refugees from Europe who had escaped the Nazis.