What was Rosalind Franklin's exact date of birth?

Rosalind Franklin was born on 25 July 1920. She was born at 50 Chepstow Villas in Notting Hill, London, into a prominent Anglo-Jewish family that valued education, public service and intellectual achievement.

Franklin showed an early interest in science and later studied at Newnham College, Cambridge. She earned a PhD in physical chemistry in 1945 for research on the physical chemistry of coal and carbon materials. That experience helped establish her as an expert in X-ray crystallography before she turned to biological structures.

In 1951, Franklin began working at King’s College London, where her X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA became central evidence in identifying the molecule’s helical structure. She later moved to Birkbeck College and made important contributions to the study of viruses before her death from cancer on 16 April 1958.

The date is sometimes confused because Franklin’s birth year is often presented alone in short biographies. Her full date is 25 July 1920, and her birthplace was Notting Hill—not Cambridge, King’s College or Birkbeck.