Rosalind Elsie Franklin was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphit.
Rosalind Franklin made a crucial contribution to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, but some would say she got a raw deal. Biographer Brenda Maddox called her the "Dark Lady of DNA," based on a once disparaging reference to Franklin by one of her coworkers. Unfortunately, this negative appellation undermined the positive impact of her discovery. Indeed, Franklin is in the shadows of science history, for while her work on DNA was crucial to the discovery of its structure, her contribution to that landmark discovery is little known.
Franklin moved to Birkbeck College where, ironically, she began working on the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus, building on research that Watson had done before his work on DNA. During the next few years she did some of the best and most important work of her life, and she traveled the world talking about coal and virus structure. However, just as her career was peaking, it was cut tragically short when she died of ovarian cancer at age 37.
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