[1] He won the inaugural Pulitzer Prizes in two journalism categories both for his work as a science writer with the Baltimore Evening Sun.
[3] He was professor emeritus of journalism at his alma mater; previously, Franklin taught creative writing at the University of Oregon and was the head of the technical journalism department at Oregon State University.
[2] The Canadian television film Shocktrauma is based on the book Franklin co-wrote with Alan Doelp.
Working for The Baltimore Sun, Franklin won the first Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1979, for covering a brain surgery,[5] and won the first Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1985, for a series about molecular psychiatry, "The Mind Fixers".
[6] Franklin died from esophageal cancer in Annapolis, Maryland, on January 21, 2024.