Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (July 25, 1920 – April 16, 1958) was an English biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer who made important contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal and graphite.

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 * Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.
 * in answer to her father, who accused her of making science her religion, as related by


 * What’s the use of doing all this work if we don't get some fun out of this?
 * As quoted by Aaron Klug, interview, 17 June 2005


 * The results suggest a helical structure (which must be very closely packed) containing 2, 3 or 4 co‐axial nucleic acid chains per helical unit, and having the phosphate groups near the outside.
 * Notes from November 1951 about Franklin's electron microscopy imaging of DNA, which led to Watson & Crick's publication of the structure of DNA by sixteen months. As quoted in How Rosalind Franklin Discovered the Helical Structure of DNA: Experiments in Diffraction (in The Physics Teacher 49, 140 (2011); doi: 10.1119/1.3555496), quoting Rosalind Franklin and DNA (2000), page 15.