Science

DNA's structure was solved using a photograph its taker never agreed to share

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick built the correct double-helix model of DNA using X-ray diffraction data — 'Photo 51' — captured by Rosalind Franklin's lab and shown to them without her knowledge. Franklin died in 1958 of ovarian cancer, four years before Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel Prize, which is never awarded posthumously.

Rosalind Franklin & Raymond Gosling, Photo 51 — X-ray diffraction image, King's College London, 1952

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