First Work: Properties of Coal at BCURA Part I

BCURA (the ​British Coal Utilisation Research Association) had been founded in 1938, only four years before Rosalind Franklin came there. It was located at Kingston-on-Thames, outside London, and, in Franklin's words, was "miles from anything." She also expected limited social engagement, as she would be primarily dining and living around "lab people" which she expected to be boring compared to the more varied crowd she spent time with at Cambridge.

​Franklin's worries about the social atmosphere were partly resolved when she moved in with her cousin Irene, a college friend of this cousin, and one other roommate: a black and white kitten!

BCURA Scientists, including Rosalind Franklin, in 1945
[Unknown title], 1945, sourced from Fig. 2 of Rosalind Franklin, carbon scientist by Harris and Suarez-Martinez, 2020, Carbon

 Franklin and her cousin volunteered as air-raid wardens during this time. Their jobs involved making sure the 'blackouts' were observed adequately, serving two-hour shifts at the wardens' post, and going out in emergency situations. These were quite trying experiences for Franklin, as Jenifer Glynn, Franklin's sister, explained in her memoir: "Crossing Putney Common for her duties, at night during air raids, was a worse ordeal for Rosalind that we realized at the time--sometimes in the distress of her last illness it haunted her dreams."

Franklin grew in prestige during her time working for BCURA. She worked on her research there for four years (ending in 1946).

BCURA did research in coal, relating to the war. Franklin's studies, in particular, focused on tiny pores in coal. Franklin's research was a huge contribution to the study of coals. For example, in a quote Glynn included in her memoir, Peter Harris wrote in reference to Franklin's work: "This was probably the first demonstration of molecular sieve behaviour in any carbon. Today [2001], carbon molecular sieves are of great value in industry where, among other things, they are used to separate nitrogen from oxygen in air."*

Franklin's research at BCURA involving the properties of coal, which I will expand more upon in the next post, became her dissertation for her Ph.D. (which she received from Cambridge in 1945) as well as several published scientific journal articles. 

Sources

* P. J. F. Harris (2001), 'Rosalind Franklin's work on coal, carbon and graphite', Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 26, 204-10