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The protagonist and central figure of Photograph 51, Rosalind Franklin is a brilliant Jewish British scientist in her mid-30s who has returned to England after several years abroad in Paris to work in the X-ray crystallography lab at King’s College London. Rosalind receives a rude awakening upon arriving, however. She’s been brought to King’s under false pretenses—she is meant to be Maurice Wilkins’s assistant, a role she refuses to take on principle. Rosalind, wearied, jaded, and toughened after facing years and years of sexism and antisemitism in the science community (in spite of her equal or superior qualifications to those of her male colleagues) is completely committed to the practice of working, researching, and studying her results alone—a practice that offends and confounds Wilkins as well as Rosalind’s own research assistant Ray Gosling. Rosalind is serious, intense, and aloof—traits that Rosalind likely practiced and calculated over the years to protect herself from the disappointments and indignities that come with being a woman in science. At the start of the play, Rosalind stands on the precipice of a great scientific discovery. And although she and Gosling ultimately produce an image, Photograph 51, that hints at the much-sought-after answer to the structure of DNA, Rosalind’s cautious research practices keep her from sharing her findings with her colleagues. When Gosling gives Photo 51 to Wilkins—who, in turn, shows it to the American scientist James Watson—Rosalind’s solitary methods backfire. Watson and his research partner Francis Crick hurry to develop a model together, and their research outpaces Rosalind’s. Then, when Rosalind is diagnosed with ovarian cancer and hospitalized, Watson and Crick “discover the secret of life” and publish their findings, winning the Nobel Prize along with Wilkins. At the end of the play, Rosalind acknowledges that while certain obstacles—from societal prejudice to her own prickly personality—got in her way, she never wavered in her devotion to her work. A self-reliant woman dedicated to benefiting humanity through her research, Rosalind Franklin is a complex character who comes to find that the walls she’s built to protect herself and her work also, unfortunately, hinder her.
Rosalind Franklin Quotes in Photograph 51
The Photograph 51 quotes below are all either spoken by Rosalind Franklin or refer to Rosalind Franklin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Photograph 51 Quotes
ROSALIND. […] We were so powerful. Our instruments felt like extensions of our own bodies. We could see everything, really see it—except, sometimes, what was right in front of us.
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ROSALIND. (Writing the letter, cold and formal.) I require an X-ray generating tube. And a camera specially made so that the temperature inside it can be carefully controlled. Otherwise, the solution will change during its exposure, and, Dr. Wilkins, you know as well as I do that that just won’t do. Finally, if at all possible, I’d like to know when this order will be placed so that, if need be, I can request a few minor modifications. Yours sincerely, Dr. Rosalind Franklin.
WILKINS. Dear Miss Franklin, you are ever so ... …cordial.
ROSALIND. Dr. Wilkins, I will not be anyone’s assistant. (Beat.)
WILKINS. What was that?
ROSALIND. I don’t like others to analyze my data, my work. I work best when I work alone. If, for whatever reason, I am forced into a different situation, I should feel that I came here under false pretenses.
WILKINS. I see… […] Then perhaps we could think of our work together as a kind of partnership. Surely that will suit you?
ROSALIND. I don’t suppose it matters whether or not it suits me, does it?
ROSALIND. I’ll have you know that nuclear force is not something of which I approve.
WILKINS. Then I suppose it’s good no one asked you to work on it. […] At any rate, you lot never do seem to approve of it.
ROSALIND. I’m not sure I understand what you’re driving at. […]
WILKINS. Just that ... people ... worked hard to ... come up with these ways to save ... well, the Jews, and then all you hear back from them is how they don’t approve. It feels a little ...
ROSALIND. You’re absolutely right that the Jews should be in a more grateful frame of mind these days.
WILKINS. All right, Rosy.
ROSALIND. It’s absurd, isn’t it? Archaic! […] This business of the senior common room…
GOSLING. I suppose. But ... you can’t worry about it. […] It’s not like biophysicists have such great conversations at meals anyway. They tend just to talk about the work. They never take a break.
ROSALIND. But those are precisely the conversations I need to have. Scientists make discoveries over lunch.
WILKINS. I almost went to see the very same performance. […] Our paths so nearly crossed. (Beat.) Was it any good?
ROSALIND. Oh yes. Very.
WILKINS. The great difference, you know, between The Winter’s Tale and the story on which it’s based—Pandosto—is that in Shakespeare’s version the heroine survives.
ROSALIND. John Gielgud played Leontes. He really was very good. Very lifelike. Very good. When Hermione died, even though it was his fault, I felt for him. I truly did.
WILKINS. And who played Hermione?
ROSALIND. I don’t remember. She didn’t stand out, I suppose.
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WATSON. But she wasn’t [in the laboratory,] was she. She was too busy snow-shoeing and ... enjoying things like ... nature and small woodland creatures.
CRICK. I mean, didn’t she feel that something was at her back, a force greater than she was ...
WATSON. You mean us?
CRICK. No. I mean fate.
WATSON. What’s the difference?
ROSALIND. (Condescendingly.) Flushed with pride, are we?
WILKINS. I beg your pardon?
ROSALIND. X-ray patterns you made?
WILKINS. It was just a manner of speaking. Everyone knows who’s on the team, that there is a team.
ROSALIND. Well, I don’t know which X-ray patterns you were looking at, but in the ones I took, it’s certainly not clear that there is a helix.
WILKINS. It’s like you’re unwilling to see it.
CRICK. She’s really that bad?
WILKINS. Worse.
WATSON. The Jews really can be very ornery.
WILKINS. You’re telling me.
WATSON. Is she quite overweight?
WILKINS. Why do you ask?
CRICK. James is many things but subtle is not one of them. […] You see, he imagines that she’s overweight. The kind of woman who barrels over you with the force of a train. […]
CASPAR. (To the audience.) To Watson and Crick, the shape of something suggested the most detailed analysis of its interior workings. As though, by looking at something you could determine how it came to be ... how it gets through each day.
ROSALIND. As a girl, I prided myself on always being right. Because I was always right. I drove my family near mad by relentlessly proposing games to play that I’d win every time. […] And when I was at university, and it was becoming as clear to my parents as it always had been for me that I would pursue science, I left Cambridge to meet my father for a hiking weekend. (Staring again at the image.) And atop a mountain in the Lake District, when I was eighteen years old, he said to me, “Rosalind, if you go forward with this life… you must never be wrong…”
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WILKINS. But what are we celebrating??
GOSLING. It’s amazing, really—
ROSALIND. Have some faith in me. There is something to celebrate. Take a leap of faith.
WILKINS. (Bitterly.) As though you would ever do that. […] I mean, my God, can you even hear yourself? The irony?
ROSALIND. (Slowly.) I take a leap of faith every day, Maurice, just by walking through that door in the morning ... I take a leap of faith that it’ll all be worth it, that it will all ultimately mean something.
WILKINS. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
ROSALIND. No, you wouldn’t.
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CRICK. And what is a race anyway? And who wins? If life is the ultimate race to the finish line, then really we don’t want to win it. Shouldn’t want to win it. Should we? […] Or maybe the race is for something else entirely. Maybe none of us really knew what we were searching for. What we wanted. Maybe success is as illusory and elusive as ... well, Rosalind was to us.
WATSON. Do tell us what our little ray of sunshine is keeping busy with these days.
CRICK. (Actually worried.) Wilkins, old boy. Are you sure you’re quite all right?
WATSON. Anything new on her docket? If you don’t mind sharing, that is.
WILKINS. I honestly couldn’t give two damns. I’m happy to tell you all I can remember.
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CASPAR. Watson and Crick got hold of the paper Rosalind had written. It was confidential.
CRICK. It wasn’t confidential. Another scientist at Cambridge gave it to us. […]
WILKINS. Well it wasn’t published, that’s for sure. And it included [….] information that became critical to your work.
WATSON. I’m sure we would have gotten there sooner or later, even without it.
WILKINS. So would we have done, with the benefit of your work. You had ours but we didn’t have yours!
WATSON. There was no “we” where you were concerned. […]
GOSLING. Anyway, it doesn’t matter how they got the paper, only that they got it.
CASPAR. And that Rosalind didn’t know she should be in a hurry.
ROSALIND. I think I’m thinking about how I’ve come to the end of thinking. […]
WILKINS. We could talk it through. It might help. […]
GOSLING. For a moment, everything stopped. Different ways our lives could go hovered in the air around us. […]
ROSALIND. You know, I think I am going to call it a night. I haven’t been home before midnight for a fortnight and really what’s the point of being here and not getting anywhere? […]
GOSLING. And then there was only one way everything would go.
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GOSLING. There’s no science that can explain it. Loneliness. […]
CASPAR. Rosalind? (She clutches her stomach.)
WATSON. It works, Francis. It works. (A very long beat.)
CRICK. It’s ...
WATSON. I can’t believe it.
CRICK. It’s life unfolding, right in front of us. (Rosalind doubles over in her chair, and gasps.)
CASPAR. Rosalind?
WILKINS. It’s the loneliest pursuit in the world. Science. Because there either are answers or there aren’t.
ROSALIND. We lose. In the end, we lose. The work is never finished and in the meantime our bodies wind down, tick slower, sputter out.
WILKINS. Like grandfather clocks.
ROSALIND. If I’d only ...
GOSLING. Been more careful around the beam.
WATSON. Collaborated.
CRICK. Been more open, less wary. Less self-protective.
CASPAR. Or more wary, more self-protective.
WATSON. Been a better scientist.
CASPAR. Been willing to take more risks, make models, go forward without the certainty of proof.
CRICK. Been friendlier.
GOSLING. Or born at another time.
CRICK. Or born a man.
WILKINS. And they do. I love that Hermione wasn’t really dead. That she comes back.
ROSALIND. (Sympathetically.) No, Maurice. She doesn’t. Not really.
WILKINS. Of course she does.
ROSALIND. No.
WILKINS. Then how do you explain the statue coming to life?
ROSALIND. Hope. They all project it. Leontes projects life where there is none, so he can be forgiven.
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Rosalind Franklin Character Timeline in Photograph 51
The timeline below shows where the character Rosalind Franklin appears in Photograph 51. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Photograph 51
The stage lights come up on Rosalind Franklin. In romantic, nostalgic terms, she describes the work she and her colleagues did to...
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Rosalind recalls how, throughout her childhood, she constantly drew shapes—endless and miniature “repeating structures.” She remembers...
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More voices continue adding to the chaos, reconstructing the background of Rosalind’s decision to venture to London. Don Caspar and Ray Gosling join the fray and continue...
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The action shifts suddenly. Rosalind is at King’s College with Wilkins, who informs her that she won’t be working on...
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Rosalind proclaims that she refuses to work as anyone’s assistant—she likes to do her own research...
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...happened. Watson says the “race [was] lost […] in a single moment” as soon as Rosalind realized she’d been brought to King’s under false pretenses. Wilkins tells him that he’s wrong,...
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Rosalind comments upon the gloomy nature of the lab, claiming that her working conditions in Paris...
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Rosalind adds that no female scientists from Britain were offered any research positions during the war,...
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...in the room, declares that it’s already two in the afternoon—well past time for lunch. Rosalind agrees it’s time for a break and asks Wilkins where they should go to eat....
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Rosalind asks Gosling what Wilkins is like, knowing they’ve worked together for a long time. Gosling...
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Wilkins returns from lunch. Rosalind blithely asks him how his meal was, adding how “glad” she is that on her...
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Several days later, Rosalind and Wilkins are back in the lab after the weekend. Wilkins asks Rosalind how her...
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As their friendly conversation dies down, Wilkins asks Rosalind what she’s going to work on over the course of the morning. Rosalind says she...
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Gosling comes forward to describe a correspondence Rosalind took up with a doctoral student in biophysics at Yale named Don Caspar after he...
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Gosling steps forward and says that Rosalind was often away—sometimes she’d phone the lab after failing to show up and announce that...
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Commenting upon Rosalind’s frequent departures, Crick says he supposes Rosalind must have felt “that something was at her...
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Back in the lab, Gosling helps Rosalind set up an X-ray shot. Frustrated with his work, Rosalind moves him aside and sets...
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...in the lab at King’s, Wilkins returns from his conference and exchanges cool pleasantries with Rosalind—pleasantries that dissolve when he asks to see what Rosalind has been working on. Rosalind is...
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...he’s supposed to get any work done if all his time is spent apologizing to Rosalind for the myriad tiny ways in which he offends her. Wilkins tells Gosling that other...
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The next day, Wilkins shows up to the lab with a box of chocolates for Rosalind. He hands them to her. She is confused and flummoxed. Wilkins explains that they’ve gotten...
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Caspar writes Rosalind another gushing letter professing his admiration for her work and filling her in on his...
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...X-ray patterns in the discovery of a clear central helix in the structure of DNA. Rosalind calls him out on his deceptiveness in claiming her research as his own—and tells him,...
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Sometime later, Rosalind and Gosling peer at an X-ray image they’ve developed—it seems to show DNA in two...
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Crick and Watson step forward to explain just how close Rosalind was to discovering the structure of DNA—but because she believed in proving things, not hypothesizing...
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Wilkins grows frustrated with Rosalind’s stoniness and her unwillingness to collaborate, hypothesize, or make a model. He goes to visit...
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In November of 1951, at a colloquium on nucleic acid structure held at King’s, Rosalind delivers a lecture while her colleagues watch. In the audience, Watson and Crick speculate about...
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...Crick have made their model. They invite the researchers from King’s to come see it. Rosalind is skeptical of the model the men have made—it’s clear that they didn’t listen to...
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Back at King’s, Gosling excitedly shows Rosalind the most recently developed X-ray photograph they’ve taken of DNA. As they stare at it,...
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Rosalind steps forward and delivers a flashback to a camping trip with her father while she...
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Back in the lab, Rosalind puts Photograph 51 away in a drawer. Gosling asks if they should show it to...
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Rosalind and Wilkins begin arguing. Wilkins says he’s never encountered a woman of “such temerity,” and...
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Caspar writes Rosalind to tell her that he has graduated from his PhD program—he is officially a doctor....
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Watson, watching the above exchange, chimes in and states how ludicrous it was for Rosalind to “be in the race and ignore it.” Crick challenges Watson, asking what a “race”...
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...has just published—which is flawed in some ways but close to the truth in others—to Rosalind and Wilkins’s lab. Watson shows Rosalind the paper, and she laments that the “rush to...
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Watson goes down the hall to Wilkins’s office and vents to him about Rosalind being an “old hag.” Wilkins agrees that Rosalind is a lot to take and a...
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...structure, and that they need to start building a new model right away. Wilkins and Rosalind, he says, have no idea that they are the ones with the answer to DNA’s...
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...Caspar arrives at the lab, Wilkins shows him around and introduces him, at last, to Rosalind—whom Wilkins calls “Miss Franklin.” Caspar, however, greets Rosalind as “Dr. Franklin.” He is clearly spellbound...
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...too. As the three men drink, Wilkins tells Watson and Crick he’s still frustrated by Rosalind and has been fantasizing about moving out to the country. Watson says it’s hard to...
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...if Wilkins has any new research to report. He says he doesn’t. Watson asks what Rosalind has been up to, and though Crick seems reluctant to pry at first, soon echoes...
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...Watson encourage Wilkins to make his own model—he says that he can’t as long as “Rosy” is around, and is surprised that Crick and Watson, having already failed once, are ready...
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...Gosling explains that things begin moving “quickly” as Watson and Crick get their hands on Rosalind’s new paper—which is confidential. They claim to have gotten it from another scientist at Cambridge...
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Back at the lab, Rosalind and Caspar find themselves working together more and more. There is clearly sexual tension between...
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That February, Watson and Crick invite their colleagues from all over England to Cambridge. Rosalind, Wilkins, Caspar, and Gosling all pay them a visit. Rosalind is in a good mood—she...
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Back in London, Rosalind and Gosling are at work in the lab—or, rather, Rosalind is hovering over their newest...
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Hours later, Rosalind is alone in the lab staring at Photograph 51. Wilkins walks in and tells her...
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...in Cambridge, Watson and Crick are in a pub finalizing their theory. Meanwhile, in London, Rosalind and Caspar are at dinner together. Caspar thanks Rosalind for agreeing to eat with him...
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In Cambridge, Crick and Watson finalize their model at the pub. In London, Caspar takes Rosalind’s hand—seconds later, she utters a painful gasp and doubles over. Wilkins steps forward. Science, he...
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Wilkins travels to Cambridge and examines Watson and Crick’s model. As he does, Rosalind steps forward and announces, to the audience, that she has two large tumors—one in each...
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Rosalind returns to her office from the hospital to find Wilkins sitting in the dark. He...
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Rosalind asks if Crick and Watson’s model is “beautiful.” Wilkins tells her it is. She tells...
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Rosalind then asks Wilkins why she didn’t get those days. She wonders aloud if she didn’t...
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Gosling steps forward and says that Rosalind never went to Leeds—she died that April at 37 years of age. As he continues...
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Wilkins approaches Rosalind and says he has something to tell her. He confesses that on the day she...
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Rosalind and Wilkins have a similar conversation to the one they had earlier in the play,...
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There is a point in life, Rosalind says sadly, where one simply can’t begin again. Wilkins admits he has “spent [his] whole...
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