Episode Details

Rosalind Franklin produced the X-ray crystallography image that revealed the structure of DNA. Watson and Crick used her data without her knowledge. She died of ovarian cancer at 37, four years before they collected the Nobel Prize for the discovery she made possible.

This episode tells the story of Franklin's scientific brilliance, the gender politics that undermined her, and the decades-long effort to restore her to her rightful place in the history of molecular biology.

• Photo 51 and what it revealed about the helical structure of DNA
• How Watson and Crick accessed her data without permission
• The sexism she faced at King's College London
• Her later work on virus structure and why it deserved its own Nobel