Google doodle honors birthday of biophysicist Rosalind Franklin

Google devoted its doodle on Thursday to note the 93rd birthday of Rosalind Franklin, a British biophysicist and X -ray crystallographer who made great strides in our understanding of the molecular makeup of DNA and RNA but missed out on the Pulitzer Prize.

British biophysicist Rosalind Franklin.

Born in London on July 25, 1920, Franklin showed exceptional scholastic aptitude at an early age. After studying chemistry at Cambridge, Franklin went to work as a research associate at King's College London in the Medical Research Council's Biophysics Unit. During her tenure at King's College, she captured X-ray diffraction images of DNA that led to the discovery of the DNA's double helix. Her data was the basis for a 1953 hypothesis regarding the structure of DNA that led to the 1962 Pulitzer Prize.

Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at age 37 and was ineligible for Nobel Prize nomination in 1962. The honor was bestowed on Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins based on their work contributing to the understanding of nucleic acids and not exclusively for their DNA structure discoveries. However, Crick wrote in 1961 that Franklin's data was "the data we actually used" to formulate their hypothesis on the structure of DNA.

While her exposure to X-ray radiation is sometimes linked to the illness that killed her, other members of her family have died of cancer, suggesting the presence of gynaecological cancer.

Franklin's studies also contributed to the understanding of the molecular structures of RNA, viruses, coal and graphite.

Google's doodle represents Franklin gazing at the double helix structure of DNA with an image of the X-ray diffraction image of DNA (known as Photo 51) at the end.

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Code-breaker Alan Turing to be pardoned (finally)

The British government chemically castrated Alan Turing.

Now it wants to say that wasn't quite cricket.

Or, rather, it wants to pardon him for the heinous crime of having been a homosexual.

As the Guardian reports, the government has decided to offer its support to a bill that would give him a complete posthumous pardon.

In the 1950s it didn't matter to the powers-that-be that Turing was a brilliant mathematician whose Turing Machine was the basis of so much of modern computing.

It didn't matter that he had helped crack Germany's Enigma Code during World War II.

What mattered was that he was prosecuted for homosexuality -- or gross indecency, as it was called in those days -- and told he could either go to jail or be chemically castrated. He chose the latter.

Over the years, the British government has been resistant to offering Turing a pardon. In 2009, however, Prime Minister Gordon Browndid offer an apology and admitted that Turing's treatment had been "appalling."In 1954, aged a mere 41, he ate an apple laced with cyanide. This was officially recorded as a suicide, though not everyone agrees with that conclusion.

It is likely that Turing -- who was celebrated in a Google doodle last year -- will finally receive his posthumous pardon at the end of this year. Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, a senior government figure in the House of Lords, told the Guardian he expects the pardon to pass speedily through the system. Finally.

Some might be astonished that this move had to be debated among Britain's lords. However, during the debate, a Lady Trumpington told her fellow lords and ladies: "I am certain that but for his (Turing's) work we would have lost the war through starvation."

What greater contributions Turing might have made if he had just been allowed to live his own personal life.

There's something so pitiful that someone should get a Google doodle before they get a pardon from their own government.

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Google doodle throws wild rumpus for Maurice Sendak

Let the wild rumpus start!

Beloved children's author and illustrator Maurice Sendak gets the Google doodle treatment today on what would have been his 85th birthday.

Sendak has been a childhood touchstone for generations, rising to widespread acclaim with his 1963 book "Where the Wild Things Are" and continuing to produce work until his death in May 2012.

The doodle following a turning-wheel storyline that starts by taking boyish hero Max through the land of the Wild Things and courses through other familiar settings sprung from Sendak's imagination. The flying boy from "In the Night Kitchen" makes an appearance, a work that has the distinction of being one of the most popular books for children that's also one of the most frequently banned from libraries.

A party of Sendak's characters gather around a cake for the the author and illustrator at the conclusion. 

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