Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose research produced crucial imaging evidence for the discovery of DNA's double-helix structure, though her contributions were long underrecognized.
Franklin was a skilled experimental scientist who used X-ray diffraction techniques to capture detailed images of DNA fibers, including the famous 'Photograph 51,' which revealed key structural features of the molecule.
Her data and images were shown to James Watson and Francis Crick without her knowledge or consent, and were instrumental in their 1953 published model of the DNA double helix, for which Watson and Crick, along with Maurice Wilkins, later won the Nobel Prize.
Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at just 37 years old, before the Nobel Prize was awarded, and in recent decades has received growing recognition for her essential and long under-credited role in one of biology's most important discoveries.