Florence Bell

Florence Ogilvy Bell (1 May 1913 – 23 November 2000), later Florence Sawyer, was a British scientist who contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA. She was an X-ray crystallographer in the lab of William Astbury. In 1938 they published a paper in Nature that described the structure of DNA as a "Pile of Pennies". Early life Florence Ogilvy Bell was born at 47 Hanover Road, Brondesbury Park, London, the second daughter of Thomas Bell and his wife, Annie Mary Lucas. Her father was a photographer and later advertising manager who had been born in Allendale, Northumberland, and later he moved to Greycotes, Ambleside. Florence grew up in London and attended Haberdashers' Aske Girls School in Acton, where she was head girl. Education Bell studied Natural Sciences at Girton College, Cambridge between 1932 and 1935, concentrating on chemistry, physics and mineralogy. Whilst a student at Girton College, Cambridge, she was taught how to use x-ray crystallography to study biological molecules by John Desmond Bernal. She moved to the University of Manchester, where she worked with Lawrence Bragg on protein crystallography.