Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin was a brilliant scientist who played a crucial role in understanding the structure of DNA. She was born in London in 1920 and showed a strong interest in science from a young age. She attended several schools before eventually studying at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, where she earned her Ph.D. in physical chemistry.

In the laboratory, Rosalind Franklin worked on using a technique called X-ray crystallography to study the structure of molecules. Think of X-ray crystallography as a way to take pictures of molecules by shooting X-rays at them and analyzing how the X-rays bounce off. In the early 1950s, she was using this method to study DNA fibers and obtained an X-ray image, known as "Photo 51," that provided critical insights into the structure of DNA.

Photo 51 revealed a pattern called the "X-shape," which indicated that DNA had a helical, or spiral, structure. This image gave James Watson and Francis Crick important clues about how the DNA molecule was arranged. It helped them develop their famous double helix model of DNA, which is the twisted ladder-like structure we often associate with DNA today.

Rosalind Franklin's work, though she didn't directly collaborate with Watson and Crick, was instrumental in shaping their understanding of DNA's structure. Unfortunately, due to various circumstances, including the competitive nature of scientific research at the time, her contributions were not fully acknowledged during her lifetime. Watson and Crick's paper proposing the double helix model was published in 1953, the same year that Rosalind Franklin passed away from ovarian cancer at the age of 37.

In summary, Rosalind Franklin was a talented scientist who used X-ray crystallography to capture an image that provided vital insights into the structure of DNA. Her work, although sometimes underappreciated, significantly influenced the outcome of the discovery of DNA's double helix structure.