Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British chemist and molecular biologist. Born in London, she was educated in physical chemistry at Newnham College, Cambridge. She made important X-ray studies of deoxyribonucleic acid, commonly called DNA, which transmits genetic information from one generation to the next. Franklin's work contributed greatly to the construction in 1953 of a model of the structure of DNA by the American biochemist James Dewey Watson and the British Francis Crick.
Franklin made other important contributions to chemistry and molecular biology
through her use of X-ray diffraction techniques. Her structural analysis of
coals and chars promoted a better understanding of their properties. She also
determined the complex structure of the tobacco mosaic virus, which attacks
tobacco plants.
Franklin was born in London and graduated from Cambridge University in 1941. She
died of cancer at the age of 37.