Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid

"Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" was the first article published to describe the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, using X-ray diffraction and the mathematics of a helix transform. It was published by Francis Crick and James D. Watson in the scientific journal Nature on pages 737–738 of its 171st volume (dated 25 April 1953).

This article is often termed a "pearl" of science because it is brief and contains the answer to a fundamental mystery about living organisms. This mystery was the question of how it is possible that genetic instructions are held inside organisms and how they are passed from generation to generation. The article presents a simple and elegant solution, which surprised many biologists at the time who believed that DNA transmission was going to be more difficult to deduce and understand. The discovery had a major impact on biology, particularly in the field of genetics, enabling later researchers to understand the genetic code.
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Collaborators and controversy

Main article: King's College London DNA Controversy

Although Watson and Crick were first to put together all the scattered fragments of information that were required to produce a successful molecular model of DNA, their findings had been based on data collected by researchers in several other laboratories. For example they drew on published research relating to the discovery of Hydrogen bonds in DNA by John Masson Gulland, Denis Jordan and their colleagues at University College Nottingham in 1947. However the discovery of the DNA double helix also used a considerable amount of material from the unpublished work of Rosalind Franklin, A.R. Stokes, Maurice Wilkins, and H.R. Wilson at King's College London. Key data from Wilkins, Stokes, and Wilson, and, separately, by Franklin and Gosling, were published in two separate additional articles in the same issue of Nature with the article by Watson and Crick. The article by Watson and Crick acknowledged that they had been "stimulated" by experimental results from the King's College researchers, and a similar acknowledgment was published by Wilkins, Stokes, and Wilson in the following three-page article.

In 1968, Watson published a highly controversial autobiographical account of the discovery of the double-helical, molecular structure of DNA called The Double Helix, which was not publicly accepted either by Crick or Wilkins. Furthermore, Erwin Chargaff also printed a rather "unsympathetic review" of Watson's book in the March 29, 1968 issue of Science. In the book, Watson stated among other things that he and Crick had access to some of Franklin's data from a source that she was not aware of, and also that he had seen—without her permission—the B-DNA X-ray diffraction pattern obtained by Franklin and Gosling in May 1952 at King's in London. In particular, in late 1952, Franklin had submitted a progress report to the Medical Research Council, which was reviewed by Max Perutz, then at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge. Watson and Crick also worked in the MRC-supported Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge whereas Wilkins and Franklin were in the MRC-supported laboratory at King's in London. Such MRC reports were not usually widely circulated, but Crick read a copy of Franklin's research summary in early 1953.

Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, her contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely recognised posthumously.