Rosalind Franklin is perhaps the female scientist I most look up to. It was her work that allowed the discovery of the structure of DNA. She was an expert x-ray crystallographer. Her picture of the structure of DNA was considered to be “amongst the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken” by J.D. Bernal. The picture of DNA was shown without her permission to Watson and Crick. They quickly deduced that the structure of DNA was a double-helix and quickly published their findings. They won the Nobel prize for their findings. I am pretty sure she would have been able to deduce the structure of DNA if given enough time. After that she did pioneering work on the tobacco mosaic and polio viruses. She died really young at age 37. Her use of x-ray crystallography is said to be a possible factor in her ovarian cancer.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/rosalind-franklin-legacy.html