Rosalind Franklin was called the "Dark lady of DNA" simply because her name was never mentioned or credited by anyone, with having to help discover DNA structure. "She died proud of her world reputation both in coal studies and in virus research" no matter how much of her work she was cheated on.
Socially, Franklin left in a period of discrimination and injustice. So, she decided to go to Birkbeck University. At Birkbeck she continued to study DNA's structure, as well as the structure of coal, but her main focus was on plant viruses, where she published important papers on the structure of viruses. As time progressed, the science journal "Nature" published Watson and Crick's paper on the structure of DNA. Franklin unfortunately was apparently not aware that Watson, Wilkin and Crick had falsely claimed and used her research. In 1953, Watson, Wilkin and Crick used and stole Rosalind Franklins data to build their ultimately correct and detailed description of DNA's structure.
Franklin soon found out, and was not vicious, but pleased, so she published a substantiate report on the Watson-Crick model. Overall, in 1962 Crick, Wilkins, and Watson won
the noble peace prize for their discovery of the double helix structure.
They did not mention Franklin's contribution to the discovery and referred
to her as "Rosy." In reality, if it wasn't for Rosalind Franklin, all three scientists would have probably never got it.
In the summer of 1956, Rosalind Franklin was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer, probably caused by repeated exposure to the very X-ray radiation she had mastered
Rosalind Franklin was born on July 25, 1920 in London, England. Her family was very well off. They were not extremely rich, but had a lot of money. Her father Ellis Franklin was very well educated and worked at the Keyser...