Franklin named her colleague Aaron Klug as the principal beneficiary in her will.
Franklin made the will on 2 December 1957, while she was being treated for cancer. She appointed her three brothers as executors, but left the principal personal bequest to Klug, a physicist and crystallographer who had become her close collaborator at Birkbeck College.
Klug was to receive £3,000 and Franklin’s Austin car. Other bequests included £2,000 to Mair Livingstone, £1,000 to Anne Piper, and £250 to her nurse, Miss Griffith. The remainder of the estate was designated for charitable purposes.
A common mix-up is to confuse Klug with Franklin’s earlier King’s College colleagues. John Bernal supervised her later virus research, Raymond Gosling worked with her on DNA diffraction, and Maurice Wilkins was her colleague at King’s. Klug, however, was the named principal beneficiary and later helped preserve and explain Franklin’s scientific legacy.