Freda Collier obituary

Aunt Freda Collier, who has died aged 97, became famous in the 1950s as part of the core team of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin John Randall (over Franklin PhD student Raymond Gosling) who works at Kings College London on the structure of DNA. Freda x-Franklin, photographer and director of the lab that produces the famous King "image 51" seen by James Watson, University of Cambridge. Watson realized immediately revealed that the molecule was a double helix.

Watson

As described later in his book The Double Helix (1968) ". From the moment I saw the picture my mouth fell open and my pulse began to beat "Following the announcement by Watson and his colleague Francis Crick in 1953 that the structure of DNA has finally cracked, Freda has traveled extensively United States explain the techniques of X-ray diffraction equipment used by the King's College.

Ticehurst

Freda was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, the youngest of seven surviving children - five girls and two boys. His early years as a photographer were at the General Electric Company in Wembley, north London, where Randall had worked before, and it was he who convinced her to join the team at King's College 1950.

• Her boyfriend was killed during the Second World War, but later met and married the Church distinguished army captain Frank Collier and moved to Folkestone. There were no children of the marriage, but she enjoyed the company of her many nieces and nephews, and later in life triplets Lynne and Paul Jones - a family that lived in the street - which became accommodate their children. Lynne Freda care in the years after Frank's death in 2010.
• Freda was a devout Christian and shared fully in the life of the church of her husband, raising thousands of pounds for charities around the world. His passion was strong and the plants spread and selling coffee in the morning. His enthusiasm was infectious for life, as was his laugh. Boundless energy, and even in their 80s and partially blind, she and Frank were left by train for their annual vacation in Lugano, Switzerland, to change trains in Paris loaded with luggage (Frank hated flying).

My aunt was the closest confidant of Franklin, who died of ovarian cancer in 1958 before the Nobel Prize was awarded to Crick, Watson and Wilkins in 1962 to unravel the structure DNA. It was a big pain in the contribution of Freda Franklin to discover has never been fully recognized. The eminent physicist JD Bernal describes pictures of my aunt as "one of the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken".

He is survived by five nieces and four nephews.


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