The British physical chemist and molecular biologist Rosalind Elsie Franklin (1920-1958) made her most outstanding contribution to molecular biology by establishing the crystallographic basis for the structure of DNA.

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in London, England, on July 25, 1920, the second child and first daughter of Ellis and Muriel (Waley) Franklin. Her family's background was in banking and the arts. Yet, by the age of 15 she had chosen science as her vocation. Years later she still debated this decision with her father, who eventually accepted it even though it meant, at that time, a choice of career over marriage and family life.

Following St. Paul's Girls' School in London, she went to Cambridge University in 1938 as a chemistry student at Newnham College. After graduation in 1941 she remained in Cambridge on a research scholarship to study gas-phase chromatography with Ronald G. W. Norrish, a Nobel Laureate for chemistry in...