Rosalind Franklin was born into a wealthy Jewish family in London, England. Franklin's father, Ellis Franklin, was a professor of electromagnetics and World War I history at Working Men's College and later became president of the school. His father's first name is also his middle name. Rosalind Franklin studied at St Paul's Girls' School before entering university; she decided to become a chemist while she was still in high school. After entering university in 1938, she began studying chemistry. She had designed the chemical structure of DNA in 1939, painted a spiral pattern and graduated from Newnham College, University of Cambridge in 1941. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Franklin received her PhD from Cambridge University at that time, Cambridge did not grant the BA degree to any woman. student. In the fall of 1946, Franklin was appointed to the Central Laboratory of State Chemical Services in France, where she worked with JacquesMering. In France, she discovered X-ray diffraction, which would play an important role in her research and later become her discovery of DNA. In 1951, Franklin was offered a three-year research fellowship at King's College London and joined the laboratory of John Randall. Using his knowledge, Franklin would create and improve the X-ray crystallography unit at King's College. In John Randall's laboratory, she crosses paths with Maurice Wilkins. She and Wilkins led separate research groups and had worked in different fields, although both were concerned with the study of DNA. Before Randall put Franklin in charge of his DNA project, no one had worked on it for over a month. Wilkins was away at the time, when he returned he realized he had misunderstood her role, he thought she was a technical assistant. The two scientists were peers. Her mistake, recognized but never overcome, was not surprised by the climate that then reigned for women at the university, with only men being allowed to enter the university canteens. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. In May 1952, Franklin and his student Raymond Gosling conducted a long period of research to obtain an X-ray crystal diffraction photo of type B DNA and assigned the Patterson function specifically to solve crystal diffraction problems X-rays. They then named the photo “Photo51”. In 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the double helix model of DNA, but Rosalind Franklin never had the chance to receive this prize because she died of cancer of the ovary four years earlier at the age of 37