Jacques Mering

Jacques Mering (3 January 1904 – 29 March 1973) was a Lithuanian-born, naturalised French engineer well known in the fields of X-ray crystallography and mineralogy.^[1][2] He earned the degree of Diploma in Electrical Engineering (Diplôme d'Ingénieur en Génie Electrique) from École Spéciale des Travaux Publics, and Bachelor of Science (Licencié de Sciences) from Faculté des sciences. He served in the French Army for a year during 1931–1932 following conscription. He was director of research at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS; the French National Centre for Scientific Research) in Paris, and subsequently Director of CNRS Laboratory in Orléans.

Perhaps, Mering is best remembered for his inspiration and influence on the British chemist Rosalind Franklin, whom he trained in X-ray crystallography. Franklin's X-ray crystallographic image, popularised as Photo 51, became the single piece of clue for the discovery of the double-stranded helical structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953.^[3]