Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin · Science & Medicine
DNA Structure Discovery (Photo 51)
1920, Notting Hill, London, England — 1958, Chelsea, London, England
England (King's College London · Birkbeck College) · France (Paris)
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite.
Franklin, from a prominent Anglo-Jewish family in London, was an expert X-ray crystallographer whose 'Photo 51' and quantitative measurements captured the helical, dimensioned structure of DNA. Watson and Crick used her data — shown to them without her knowledge — to build the double-helix model. She died of ovarian cancer at 37, before the Nobel that recognised the discovery, and later also did pioneering work on virus structure.
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Source: X-ray crystallography of DNA
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DNA Structure Discovery (Photo 51)
Source: X-ray crystallography of DNA
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