Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins were studying DNA. Wilkins and Franklin used X-ray diffraction as their main tool -- beaming X-rays through the molecule yielded a shadow picture of the ...

In reality, this is not the case. Rather, DNA was first identified in the late 1860s by Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher. Then, in the decades following Miescher's discovery, other scientists ...

This X-ray diffraction picture of a DNA molecule was Watson's inspiration (the pattern was clearly a helix). Using Franklin's photograph and their own data, Watson and Crick created their famous ...