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Rosalind Franklin, the woman who never won the Nobel

The search engine pays tribute to Rosalind Franklin best known as 'the woman who was not awarded the Nobel prize for the co-discovery of the structure of DNA'

Rosalind Franklin, the British biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer would have celebrated her 93rd birthday today. Google has doodled in the honour of Franklin whose contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal and graphite are unparalleled.

However it would be her work in the field of DNA that would give Rosalind Franklin worldwide fame. Rosalind Franklin's work on the X-ray diffraction images of the DNA structure that helped her colleagues understand exactly how genetic information gets passed from parents to children.

Born in Notting Hill, London, Rosalind Franklin was born Jewish. Her father, Ellis Arthur Franklin used to be a London merchant banker while her granduncle, Herbert Samuel was the first practicing Jew to have served in the British Cabinet.

Growing up, Rosalind Franklin became an agnostic while excelling in sports, Latin and science.

Even though Rosalind Franklin's discovery proved to be groundbreaking in the study of the human DNA, her images of X-ray diffraction were shown to James D Watson (credited to by the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA along with Francis Crick) without her approval.

Franklin would thus always be known as 'the woman who was not awarded the Nobel prize for the co-discovery of the structure of DNA'.

In today's doodle, Rosalind Franklin appears in the second 'O' of 'Google' while the 'L' has been replaced with the DNA double helix.

Rosalind Franklin died in April 1958, when she was all of 37 years old.