What French laboratory did Rosalind Franklin work at from 1947 to 1950?

Rosalind Franklin worked at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'État in Paris from 1947 to 1950.

She joined the laboratory on 14 February 1947 as one of 15 researchers, working under Jacques Mering. Her appointment followed an introduction arranged by Adrienne Weill and Marcel Mathieu, a director associated with France's CNRS research network.

At the Paris laboratory, Franklin learned to apply X-ray diffraction to amorphous materials such as rayon, coal, and other forms of carbon. This was a major development in her career because X-ray crystallography had traditionally focused on regular crystals. Her Paris research helped her investigate how carbon's atomic arrangement changes as coal is transformed into graphite.

A common mix-up is confusing the laboratory with the CNRS. The CNRS helped connect Franklin with the position, but the specific French laboratory where she worked was the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'État. She later returned to Britain, joining King's College London in 1951 to study DNA.