Antony Barrington Brown. James Watson and Francis Crick. 1953.
In early 1953, Rosalind Franklin's image of the B form was shown to Watson and Crick without her knowledge or consent by her traitorous, jealous lab partner. It was, as Watson later wrote, a revelation: “I was shown Rosalind's X ray photograph and ‘Whooo! That was a helix!’... I knew roughly what it meant and it was that the Franklin photograph was the key event psychologically, it mobilized us back into action.” Using her photo and measurements the pair went back to model-building, literally moving cardboard cutouts around on their desks. They soon determined that DNA was an antiparallel double helix with a 34 Å repeat. Within a month – on 28 February 1953 – they had figured out the structure and built their famous aluminum model, which led to their receiving the Nobel Prize.
