Rosalind Franklin was 37 years old when she died.
Franklin was born on 25 July 1920 and died on 16 April 1958 in Chelsea, London. She died of ovarian cancer, with bronchopneumonia and secondary carcinomatosis also recorded in accounts of her final illness. Because her birthday had already occurred in 1957 but not yet in 1958, she was 37 at her death.
Her scientific career included major work in X-ray crystallography. At King’s College London, her diffraction studies of DNA helped reveal its molecular structure; later, at Birkbeck College, she led important research on viruses, including tobacco mosaic virus and polio virus.
The age is sometimes confused with the year of her death or with the age at which she began her DNA work. Franklin’s early death also meant she was ineligible for the 1962 Nobel Prize, which was awarded after her death to James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins.