My friend Ruth Francis, who has died aged 47 of cancer, spent a number of years as head of press communications at the scientific journal Nature, a role in which she expertly publicised breakthroughs in areas such as cloning and gene editing.
Having started out as a press officer at Cancer Research UK and then King’s College London, Ruth joined Nature in 2004 and remained there for eight years, after which she moved on to become head of communications at two other scientific publishers, BioMed Central and F1000, and then worked as a freelance until her death.
