Rosalind Franklin. Portrait of Rosalind Franklin (1920-58), British X-ray crystallographer. Her work producing X-ray images of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) was crucial in the discovery of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick. Franklin graduated from Cambridge in 1942, and conducted research in the UK and Paris until 1950. She returned to King's College, London, to work on the structure of DNA using X-ray crystallography. Her X-ray images of DNA crystals were of the highest quality, and she recognized a number of elements of the structure of DNA. It was however, Watson and Crick who finalized the structure of DNA through Franklin's X-ray pictures.