What organization funded Rosalind Franklin's virus research at Birkbeck?

The Agricultural Research Council funded Rosalind Franklin’s virus research at Birkbeck. At the end of 1954, John Desmond Bernal secured ARC support that allowed Franklin to become a senior scientist and supervise her own research group.

At Birkbeck, Franklin shifted much of her attention from DNA to viruses, especially tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), an RNA virus that infects plants. Her team used X-ray crystallography to investigate the virus’s structure, including its protein coat and the position of its RNA.

The ARC grant is sometimes confused with other funding connected to Franklin’s career. Her earlier DNA work at King’s College was carried out in an MRC Biophysics Unit, while her later polio-virus project received a major grant from the U.S. Public Health Service’s National Institutes of Health. Those were separate episodes; the organization associated with establishing and supporting her Birkbeck research group was the Agricultural Research Council.