Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) was a British scientist whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite.

She graduated in 1941 with a degree in natural sciences from Newnham College, Cambridge, then enrolled for a PhD in physical chemistry before leaving for a research position under the British Coal Utilisation Research Association in 1942. The research on coal helped her earn a PhD from Cambridge. From 1947-9, she worked at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de l'État in Paris as an X-ray crystallographer, then returned to London to apply this knowledge to discover the key properties of DNA at King's College London and Birkbeck College in 1953.

Her work on X-ray diffraction images of DNA laid the foundation for James Watson and Francis Crick to suggest in 1953 that the structure of DNA is a double-helix polymer, a spiral consisting of two DNA strands wound around each other. While Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for this discovery, Franklin's contributions were largely unrecognized during her life.

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