Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin was a British scientist who made important contributions to the understanding of the structure of DNA. She used X-ray crystallography to study the structure of DNA, and her work was essential to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick.

Franklin was born in London in 1920. She studied chemistry and physics at Cambridge University, and she then went on to do research at the University of Paris. In 1951, she joined the King's College London team that was working on the structure of DNA.

Franklin's X-ray diffraction images of DNA were very important to the discovery of the double helix structure. Watson and Crick used Franklin's images to help them visualize the structure of DNA, and they acknowledged her contribution in their Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958, at the age of 37. She is considered one of the most important scientists of the 20th century, and her work has had a profound impact on our understanding of biology.

Rosalind Franklin's work was not fully acknowledged at the time, and she died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at the age of 37.