Rosalind Elsie Franklin (1920 – 1958) unwittingly provided much of the foundation for James Watson and Francis Crick's "discovery" of the structure of DNA in 1953. Nine years later, Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in medicine for their joint findings. But because the Nobel Prize can be awarded only to the living, Franklin, who died of cancer at the age of 37, could not be honored. It was only during the 1990s that she received due credit for her extraordinary contributions to modern science. Franklin appears here in her Paris laboratory in 1950, at the end of four years spent studying in France.

Photographer: Vittorio Luzzati.

Institution: Retouching by: Winifred Kryda & Lynne Elkin.