When Was the DNA Structure Discovered?

On 25 April 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick published a one-page paper in Nature describing the double-helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Their model was built using X-ray diffraction data, most crucially "Photo 51" produced by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling at King College London, along with chemical insights from Erwin Chargaff about base-pairing ratios (A=T, G=C). The double helix — two sugar-phosphate backbones spiralling around each other with complementary base pairs in between — immediately suggested a mechanism for genetic replication. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize; Franklin had died of ovarian cancer in 1958 and was not included.