Rosalind Franklin

Notes: red wine with notes of berries, chocolate, spice, and vanilla, accented with sandalwood and oud

Rosalind Franklin. Maybe you know her story. Maybe you don’t. Either way, prepare to get riled up. Prepare to wave your feminist flag. Most of all, prepare to keep this story from repeating itself.

Rosalind Franklin was born in 1920 in a well-to-do Jewish family. Her uncle was the first practising Jew to serve in the British Cabinet and her father was a successful merchant banker who taught science and history classes at a local school for adult education. They believed in education and in giving back to society. But when Franklin decided she wanted to become a scientist at 15, and passed the admissions exam for Cambridge University, her father objected to a woman going to college and refused to pay her tuition. Until her mother changed his mind. (Presumably “Big Fat Greek Wedding” style.)

After a brief stint studying coal as part of a public service gig, during which time, she made discoveries that would later fuel air and spacecraft construction (and this is just a footnote in her career!), Franklin moved to Paris where she learned X-ray crystallography and — we like to imagine — drank lots of great wine. This prepared her for her research on the structure of DNA at a lab peopled by men who were so offended by her having...you know...actual opinions and thoughts, that they couldn’t work with her, which she no doubt found delightful.

So she worked without them, using her X-ray crystallography skills to take pictures of DNA. One picture known as “photo 51” was then used without her knowledge by fellow researchers Maurice Wilkins, James Watson, and Francis Crick. In 1962, this charming trio would go on to win the Nobel Prize for their discoveries about DNA, completely omitting to credit Franklin, who died tragically young of ovarian cancer in 1958, was no longer around to espouse her contribution, which is now acknowledged as crucial to our understanding of the elemental materials of life.

Consider this perfume an homage to that feeling when you come home from a long day of fighting the patriarchy. You settle in with a big glass of wine and maybe some chocolate, and recharge so you can fight another day. Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum.