Rosalind Franklin, born July 25, 1920, was born into a British/Jewish family. Rosalind grew up in Notting Hill, London. She was the second of five children, and her parents were refugees from Europe that had escaped from the Nazi's.

By the age of 15, Rosalind knew that she wanted to become a scientist. She studied chemistry at Newnham College, Cambridge University in 1938. She became very good at using x-rays, and used x-ray crystallography.

Rosalind and her student Raymond Gosling had found an amazing discovery. They took pictures of DNA and discovered that there were two forms of it. There was a dry form "A" and a wet form "B". One of their X-ray diffraction pictures of the "B" form of DNA, known as Photograph 51, became famous as critical evidence in identifying the structure of DNA.

James Watson and Francis Crick saw what Franklin had discovered and used it to determine that the DNA molecule was in the shape of a double helix and had paired bases. Even though Francis made the discovery, Watson and Crick took most of the credit.

James and Francis, along with Maurice Wilkins, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Watson suggested that Rosalind should have been awarded with the Nobel Prize in chemistry along with Wilkins, but the Nobel Committee did not make the nomination