Rosalind Franklin

Growing up in the interwar period in London, Rosalind Franklin was determined to become a scientist, defying her father's wishes. After World War II, Franklin worked at the French government's central chemical research laboratory, where she learned X-ray crystallography. This technique relies on a beam of X-rays that passes through a crystal and strikes photographic film, letting a trained reader to see a three-dimensional arrangement of atoms. Her training in this field led to opportunities to photograph DNA, which allowed researchers to study in depth this complex molecule and to come to conclusions about its structure, including scientists James Watson and Francis Crick. Though Franklin proposed several conclusions similar to Watson and Crick's, Franklin was not sufficiently credited for her photographic work that led to their discovery. In 1958, this unsung scientist's life was cut short at age 37 by ovarian cancer. Watson and Crick later won a Nobel Prize for their DNA research, but credit escaped the late scientist with the artist's eye for capturing complex atoms on film. Rosalind Franklin delves into this woman's remarkable career and her contributions to the study of human biology.