Rosalind Franklin made rounds mere years after her death when in 1968 a book authored by the now majorly discredited nobel prize-winning racist anti-semitic, James Watson, known as “The Double Helix” came out revealing how big a factor Rosalind Franklin was in finding the shape of deoxyribonucleic acid. She was working on crystallization research taking many pictures of various objects when James Watson showed up at her door in the research lab they shared. He looks through the pictures she had been taking and finds one quite peculiar. She calls it photograph 51, a X-ray diffraction of DNA. Subtly, Watson asks if he may borrow the picture and runs back to his lab. They know the shape of DNA, a double-helix.

What makes her relevant right now? The European Space agency is sending a rover to mars to study if there is or ever was life. It will be named after her.

Her sister once said”In the last year of Rosalind’s life, I remember visiting her in hospital on the day when she was excited by the news of the [Soviet Sputnik satellite] – the very beginning of space exploration,”

 

 

 

 

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47151778