Archive: Rosalind Franklin

Archive: Rosalind Franklin

Author: BBC September 17, 2026 Duration: 54:16
Misha Glenny delves in to the In Our Time archive to select ten episodes for listeners to revisit. His seventh choice is the pioneering scientist Rosalind Franklin (1920 - 1958), first released in February 2018. During her distinguished career, Franklin carried out ground-breaking research into coal and viruses but she is perhaps best remembered for her investigations in the field of DNA. In 1952 her research generated a famous image that became known as Photograph 51. When the Cambridge scientists Francis Crick and James Watson saw this image, it enabled them the following year to work out that DNA has a double-helix structure, one of the most important discoveries of modern science. Watson, Crick and Franklin's colleague Maurice Wilkins received a Nobel Prize in 1962 for this achievement but Franklin did not and today many people believe that Franklin has not received enough recognition for her work. With: Patricia Fara President of the British Society for the History of Science Jim Naismith Interim lead of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, Director of the Research Complex at Harwell and Professor at the University of Oxford Judith Howard Professor of Chemistry at Durham University Producer: Victoria Brignell. Reading list: Jenifer Glynn, My Sister Rosalind Franklin (Oxford University Press, 2012) Kersten T. Hall, The Man in the Monkeynut Coat: William Astbury and the Forgotten Road to the Double-Helix (Oxford University Press, 2014) Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (HarperCollins, 2002) Anne Sayre, Rosalind Franklin and DNA (first published 1975; W. W. Norton, 2000) James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (first published 1968; W&N, 2010) In Our Time is a BBC Studios production Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

For decades, Melvyn Bragg has convened some of the world's sharpest minds around a single, unassuming table, and the resulting conversations form the heart of In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg. This BBC podcast is less a formal lecture and more an eavesdropped dialogue, where complex ideas from religion, philosophy, science, and history are unpacked with genuine curiosity and clarity. Each episode focuses on a single concept, event, or figure-from the intricacies of Islamic philosophy to the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, from the rise of the novel to the fall of ancient empires. Listeners are brought directly into a thoughtful, often lively discussion where experts debate, clarify, and connect the dots, guided by Bragg's probing yet generous questioning. You'll hear the context and contradictions behind the ideas that have shaped our spiritual and intellectual landscape, presented not as dry facts but as living, debated history. The enduring appeal of this podcast lies in its depth and accessibility, transforming daunting subjects into compelling narratives. It’s a weekly invitation to step back from the noise and spend forty-five minutes engaged in the kind of substantive, ad-free conversation that reminds us of the profound connections between all fields of human thought.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg
Podcast Episodes
Handel's Messiah [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:41
Misha Glenny and his guests discuss the most famous oratorio of George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and his librettist Charles Jennens (1700-1773). For his libretto, Jennens drew from Old and New Testament texts: propheci…
The Spanish-American War 1898 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:22
Misha Glenny and guests discuss a turning point in world affairs in 1898 that left Spain greatly reduced as an imperial power and the US the owner of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, with a significant influence ov…
Silicon [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:50
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the physics, biology and chemistry of the element silicon which is at the heart of some of the most useful and beautiful objects on the planet. While it is still being created throughout t…
Dadaism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:44
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the provocative artistic phenomenon that first startled audiences in 1916 in Zurich. There, at the Cabaret Voltaire at the Holländische Meierei on the Spiegelgasse, Emmy Hennings and Hugo…
Archaea [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:53
Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the most remarkable scientific discoveries of the 20th century: the archaea microorganisms. In the 1970s the American microbiologist Carl Woese (1928-2012) realised that the tiny ba…
Margaret Beaufort [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:49
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the woman who, as a child bride, became mother to the boy who would eventually become the first king in the Tudor dynasty. Lady Margaret Beaufort (c1443-1509) was twelve when she married E…
The Columbian Exchange [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:24
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the exchange of cultures and biology across the Atlantic and Pacific after 1492. That was when Columbus reached the Bahamas, a time when Europe had no potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers or, ar…
John Keats [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:53
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the short life and lasting works of Keats (1795-1821), who in one year wrote some of the most loved poems in English. Among these are Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode on…
The Code of Hammurabi [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 51:41
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the laws that Hammurabi (c1810 - c1750 BC), King of Babylon, had carved into a black basalt pillar in present day Iraq and which, since its rediscovery in 1901 in present day Iran, has aff…
Henry IV Part 1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:57
Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the most successful of Shakespeare's plays in his own time. Written with no Part 2 in mind as 'Henry the Fourth', the play explores ideas about who can be a legitimate ruler and why…