What university did Rosalind Franklin attend?

Rosalind Franklin attended the University of Cambridge, studying natural sciences at Newnham College. She graduated in 1941 and later completed doctoral research in physical chemistry there.

Newnham College is one of Cambridge University's colleges, so both names can appear in accounts of Franklin's education. She studied chemistry, physics, and related scientific subjects before beginning research under physical chemist Ronald George Wreyford Norrish. Her doctoral thesis examined the physical chemistry of solid organic colloids, with special attention to coal.

Franklin's Cambridge education prepared her for a career in X-ray crystallography, a technique that uses the pattern produced when X-rays pass through a crystalline or partly ordered material. She later applied this method to coal, graphite, DNA, and viruses. Her most famous research was conducted after Cambridge, first in Paris and then at King's College London.

The main potential confusion is between where Franklin studied and where she worked on DNA. Cambridge was her university; King's College London was the institution where she conducted her landmark DNA research. She later joined Birkbeck College, where she investigated virus structures.