Rosalind Fraklin

Rosalind Franklin was born in 25 July 1920 in Britian. Her father was Ellis Author Franklin and her mother was Muriel Francis Waley. By the time she was 15, she knew she wanted to be a scientist. She started studying chemistry at Newnham College in 1938. In 1951 she started working at King`s College. Here she started studying DNA. She discovered that there were two types of DNA: at high humdity the DNA fibre became long and thin and when it was dried it became short and fat. These forms were named B and A respectably. She found out that DNA had two helixes. Later she left King`s to go to Birkbeck college to study as a senior scientist the tobbaco mosaic virus and the polio virus. She also focused on the RNA. During a trip in 1956 to the United States, she started suspecting something was wrong with her health. An operation in September in the same year discovered that she had two tumors in her abdomen, but she got better. At the end of 1957 she got ill again and was admitted to the Royal Marsden hospital. She returned to work in January 1958. She fell ill again on March 30 of the same year and died on April 16, !958, in Chelsea London of bronchopneumonia (brochial pneumonia), secondary carcinosis and ovarian cancer. There were many controversies after her death, for example allegations about sexsim but there is no doubt that her contribution to the reasearch of DNA was one of the biggest in history.