High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 ? 16 April 1958) was a British biophysicist, physicist, chemist, biologist and X-ray crystallographer who made important contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal and graphite. Franklin is still best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA. Her data, according to Francis Crick, was "the data we actually used"to formulate Crick and Watson's 1953 hypothesis regarding the structure of DNA. Furthermore, unpublished drafts of her papers show that she had indeed determined the overall B-form of the DNA helix.