July 25, 1920 - Birth of Rosalind Franklin "the woman who X-rayed life"

Using X-ray diffraction techniques, this woman - born in the cinematic London suburb of Notting Hill - was able to reveal the double helix structure of the molecule.

At the age of 18, she was accepted to Cambridge University (UK) where she graduated in biophysics at the age of 21. Although she was awarded a scholarship, she decided to donate it to refugee students from the Second World War.

After winning a research fellowship at Cambridge and doing her postdoc on the use of carbon, she went to Paris, France, in 1947 as a postdoctoral researcher, where she became an expert X-ray crystallographer.

In 1951 he returned to London and joined the Biophysics Unit at King's College, where he began his research on DNA and the molecular structures of viruses. She stayed there for two years and it was there that she obtained an X-ray diffraction photograph of a DNA fibre, the famous "Photograph 51", which enabled the biochemist James Dewey Watson and his British collaborator Francis Crick to later reveal the helical structure of the DNA molecule.

In 1954, Rosalind decided to move to Birkbeck College, where she worked alongside Irish scientist John Bernal. She did not completely abandon the study of DNA, incorporating research on another nucleic acid, RNA, into her projects. He also became interested in the structure of tobacco mosaic (TMV).

In 1956 her health problems began, although Rosalind continued her research and published numerous papers throughout the following year. At the end of 1957, her illness worsened again and she suffered a final relapse in March 1958. Rosalind died in Chelsea, London, on 16 April 1958 at the age of 37.

Because of her early death, Franklin never received the recognition she was due for her work on the structure of the DNA molecule. Crick and Watson, who presented the model following Franklin's results, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 1962.

If you want to know more about this scientist, click on the following link: Rosalind Franklin