Photograph 51

Rosalind Franklin and her student Raymond Gosling used X-ray diffraction at King's College London to photograph the B form of DNA in 1952, producing an image known as Photograph 51 whose sharp central cross of spots was clear evidence of a helical structure and let its dimensions be measured precisely. In January 1953, without Franklin's knowledge or permission, her colleague Maurice Wilkins showed the photograph to James Watson, and Franklin's own unpublished analysis of the data reached Francis Crick soon after; both fed directly into the double helix model Watson and Crick published in Nature that April, which credited Franklin only in a footnote as an unpublished source. Franklin died in 1958, four years before the Nobel Prize for the DNA structure went to Watson, Crick, and Wilkins; Nobel Prizes are never awarded after death, so whether she would have shared it is debated, but that her data was essential to the model, used without her full knowledge, is not. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/