Florence Bell—the ‘Housewife’ with x-ray vision

After an award-winning portrayal by Nicole Kidman in a hit West End play, a Mars Rover named in her honour, and recently a commemorative 50 pence coin released by the Royal Mint, Rosalind Franklin's crucial work in the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA is well recognized. Far less well known, however, is the name of Florence Bell, the crystallographer who first showed that X-ray analysis could be used to reveal the regular, ordered structure of DNA. This paper explores her life and work, the legacy of which is ‘Photo 51’, the famous X-ray image of DNA taken by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling in 1952 that now features on the new 50 pence coin.