Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) was an English biophysicist, physicist, chemist, biologist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal and graphite. Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA. Her data, according to Francis Crick, was a part of the data used to formulate Crick and Watson's 1953 hypothesis r...
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Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) was an English biophysicist, physicist, chemist, biologist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal and graphite. Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA. Her data, according to Francis Crick, was a part of the data used to formulate Crick and Watson's 1953 hypothesis regarding the structure of DNA. Unpublished drafts of her papers (written as she was arranging to leave King's College London) show that she had determined the overall B-form of the DNA helix. Her work supported the hypothesis of Watson and Crick and was published third, in the series of three DNA Nature articles. After finishing her portion of the DNA work, Franklin led pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic and polio viruses. She died aged 37 of complications arising from ovarian cancer.
Franklin was born in Notting Hill, London into an...
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