Rosalind Franklin and DNA Rosalind Franklin and DNA Rosalind Franklin and DNA is a biography of an English chemist Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958) written by her American friend Anne Sayre in 1975. Franklin was a physical chemist who made pivotal research in the discovery of the structure of DNA, known as "the most important discovery" in biology. DNA itself had become "life's most famous molecule". While working at the King's College London in 1951, she discovered two types of DNA called A-DNA and B-DNA. Her X-ray images of DNA indicated helical structure. Her X-ray image of B-DNA (called Photo 51) taken in 1952 became the
Photo 51 her own data, had Watson and Crick not obtained Gosling's image, is a hotly debated topic, made more controversial by the negative caricature of Franklin presented in the early chapters of Watson's history of the research on DNA structure, "The Double Helix". Watson admitted his distortion of Franklin in his book, noting in the epilogue: "Since my initial impressions about [Franklin], both scientific and personal (as recorded in the early pages of this book) were often wrong, I want to say something here about her achievements." Photo 51 Photograph 51 is the nickname given to an X-ray diffraction image of