Which Cambridge college opened a Rosalind Franklin Building in 1995?

Newnham College opened the Rosalind Franklin Building in 1995.

Newnham College, Cambridge, opened a graduate residence named the Rosalind Franklin Building in 1995. The building honours Franklin’s connection with the college, where she studied natural sciences and developed the scientific foundation for her later career as a physical chemist and X-ray crystallographer.

Franklin entered Newnham in 1938 and completed her undergraduate studies in 1941. She later received a Cambridge PhD for research on the physical chemistry of coal. Cambridge did not award women full titular degrees in the same way as men at that time; women graduates received their Cambridge degrees retroactively after reforms in 1947.

The building is not the same as later facilities named for Franklin elsewhere. Birkbeck opened a Rosalind Franklin Laboratory in 1997, while King’s College London later commemorated Franklin and Maurice Wilkins together. Newnham also placed a bust of Franklin in its garden.