Obiski Rosalind Franklin v Sloveniji - Visits of Rosalind Franklin to Slovenia

The world-renowned structural chemist and biochemist Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) maintained contacts with Slovenian and Croatian chemists and visited both countries on several occasions. On the basis of biographies and archived correspondence, this article summarises her visits to Slovenia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia. Interestingly, I discovered that the most famous mountaineering photograph of Rosalind Franklin was not taken on her family vacation in Norway in the late 1930s as generally believed, but on the Vršič Pass in Julian Alps, as the vegetation and rock structure, especially the so-called Heathen Maiden in the northwest face of Mount Prisojnik, show. It is likely that the photo was taken by her Slovenian colleague Dušan Hadži, probably in May 1952, so the photo was obviously wrongly labelled in the Franklin family archives. In addition, her mountaineering trip to Mt. Triglav and her stay at Lake Bled could not have happened in 1952 as mentioned in her biography, but rather in 1954 or 1955.