For #DNADay, I want to share a gem from the archives @Newnham_College and @NewnhamLibrary. Newnham has letters that #RosalindFranklin wrote home as a student there, and one letter in particular (dated October 12th, 1939) feels especially relevant now given #COVIDー19. (1/9)

Some highlights include: "Dear Mother and Father Thank you for the gas mask & letter...Practically the whole of the Cavendish have disappeared...Next term's lecturer has gone too, and so have the people who take our labs -- we are having a female from Bedford instead...." (2/9)

"The college is most effectively blacked out -- they say it took 5 weeks hard work to achieve...One unfortunate result of the black-out is that chemistry labs are now 11-3 instead of 11-1 and 2-5 -- not a very satisfactory arrangement." (3/9)

"We do not, so far, have to carry gas masks (only geographers do) but ... do have to spend hours in the trenches every time there is a warning. I am supposed to be responsible for waking 10 people along this corridor, and am provided with a beautiful new whistle..." (4/9)

"Cambridge is very congested... There are evacuated children, strange colleges, and RAF all around. Bedford people share bedrooms...scattered all over town, with only a house in Sidgwick Avenue as headquarters. There are 450 of them...Post is just going, Love from Rosalind" (5/9)

Franklin wrote this letter an undergraduate student @Newnham_College during WWII. While she could attend lectures, as a woman she could not officially receive a degree. Degrees were retroactively awarded to women after 1947. (6/9)

In the archives @Newnham_College there is also a fantastic letter from May 1939 where she writes to her parents about the controversial election of Dorothy Garrod, the first female professor in Oxford or Cambridge. (7/9)

While Rosalind Franklin is now well known for her #DNA work, she also made important contributions to the structure of viruses @BirkbeckUoL. (8/9)

A special thanks to Anne Thomson, the College Archivist  @Newnham_College, and  @NewnhamLibrary for sharing this incredible history of Newnham,  @Cambridge_Uni, and #Cambridge with me! (9/9)