Rosalind Franklin is famous in the history of science for her contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA, the start of the greatest biological revolution of the twentieth century. Much has been written about the importance of her part, and about how her work was affected by her position as a woman scientist. Above all she was a distinguished scientist, not only in her work on DNA, but also in her earlier work on coals and carbons and in her later work on
viruses.

In this family memoir her sister, the writer and historian Jenifer Glynn, paints a full picture of Rosalind's life. Looking at Rosalind's background; her early education, her time as a science student at Cambridge, and her relations with her family, to her life as an adult and her time in Paris and at King's, Glynn shows how much her sister achieved and how she was influenced by the social and intellectual climate of the period she worked in.