Besides DNA, RNA, viruses, and coal, Rosalind Franklin helped study the structure of graphite.
Franklin’s early scientific career focused on coal and other carbonaceous materials. At the British Coal Utilisation Research Association, she investigated coal’s fine structure, porosity, and behaviour when heated. This work formed the basis of her 1945 Cambridge PhD thesis and helped explain how coal’s microscopic structure affected its performance as a fuel.
After moving to Paris in 1947, Franklin learned X-ray diffraction techniques for studying amorphous substances from crystallographer Jacques Mering. She applied those methods to carbon materials and examined how carbon changes as it becomes graphite. Her research distinguished graphitising from non-graphitising carbon and contributed to the scientific understanding of graphitic structure.
Graphite is sometimes confused with graphene, but they are not interchangeable answers here. Graphite is a bulk form of carbon made of stacked graphene layers; Franklin’s work concerned graphite and related graphitic carbons. Her later research extended the same structural approach to DNA, RNA-containing viruses, and other biological assemblies.