The new Google doodle celebrates the life and work of British biophysicist and x-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, whose research led to the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Franklin was born in Notting Hill, London on July 25, 1920, The Guardian reminds.

She made critical contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of RNA, viruses, coal and graphite.

Franklin died from ovarian cancer in April 1958, aged just 37.

The scientist has perhaps become best known as "the woman who was not awarded the Nobel prize for the co-discovery of the structure of DNA".

During her DNA research, Franklin worked at King's College London under Maurice Wilkins.

The story goes that he took some of her x-ray crystallography images without her knowledge and showed them to his friends, Francis Crick and James Watson, who were also trying to discover the structure of DNA.

Wilkins, Crick and Watson were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1962.

Crick later acknowledged that Franklin's images were "the data we actually used" to formulate their 1953 hypothesis regarding the structure of DNA.

The most significant of those images is known as Photo 51, which is also the inspiration for an exhibition currently at Somerset House in London.