Watson and Crick,discoverers of the structure of DNA. James Watson (b.1928,left) and Francis Crick (1916-2004),with their model of part of a DNA molecule in 1953. Watson and Crick met at the Cavendish Laboratory,Cambridge,in 1951. Their work on DNA was performed with a knowledge of Chargaff's ratios of the bases in DNA and access to the X-ray crystallography of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King's College London. Combining this knowledge led to the deduction that DNA exists as a double helix. Crick,Watson and Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine,Franklin having died in 1958. Photographed in the Cavendish Laboratory,University of Cambridge,UK,in May 1953 |