The beautiful twisted shape of DNA, known as the double helix, was one of the most important discoveries in biology. But who are the scientists behind it?
🔬 Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin was a brilliant X-ray crystallographer. In 1952, she captured an image known as Photo 51, which revealed the helical structure of DNA. Her careful and precise work provided the essential evidence needed to understand DNA’s shape.
🔬 James Watson & Francis Crick
In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick built the first accurate model of DNA at the University of Cambridge. They used Franklin’s data (without her direct permission) along with other findings to create the famous double helix model.
✨ Why It Matters
The discovery of DNA’s structure changed biology forever. It explained how genetic information is stored, copied, and passed on to future generations.
- 📅 Discovery Year: 1953
- 🏅 Nobel Prize: Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- ⚖️ Note: Rosalind Franklin passed away before the prize and was not included, though today she is recognised as essential to the discovery.
💡 Fun Fact
DNA is so small that if you stretched out all the DNA in one human cell, it would be about 2 metres long! Imagine folding that into a tiny nucleus.
Related reading: What is DNA? Structure and Function
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