In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick were able to build upon the work of English chemist and X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin. She made contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Because Dr. Franklin died of cancer at the age of 37 in 1958, she was not honored along with Watson, Crick and British physicist and molecular biologist Maurice Wilkins who all shared the Nobel Prize for their