Timeline Wednesday 16 April 1958

Events on Wednesday 16 April 1958 2

• 1920 – 1958 Rosalind Franklin X-ray crystallographer whose data was pivotal to discovering the structure of DNA Rosalind Elsie Franklin (1920-1958) was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose diffraction images of DNA, most famously "Photo 51", provided critical evidence for the double-helix structure published by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953. Beyond DNA, she made lasting contributions to the understanding of coal and carbon structures and to the molecular structure of viruses, including tobacco mosaic virus and poliovirus. Her data was used by Watson and Crick without her knowledge or consent, and for decades her role in the DNA discovery was underappreciated. She died of ovarian cancer at 37, four years before the 1962 Nobel Prize was awarded to Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins for the work her data underpinned.
• 1958 Death of Rosalind Franklin Dies in Chelsea, London, at the age of 37 Rosalind Franklin died on 16 April 1958 in Chelsea, London, from complications of ovarian cancer, likely linked in part to her prolonged occupational exposure to X-ray radiation. She was 37 years old and had continued active scientific work almost until the end of her life. Her death came four years before the Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of DNA's structure, a prize she would not have been eligible to share posthumously under Nobel rules.