Watson and Crick publish DNA structure

April 25, 1953

In a one-page Nature paper, two Cambridge researchers proposed that DNA was a double helix of paired bases, and noted, with almost criminal understatement, that this suggested a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material. Rosalind Franklin's X-ray photographs had been crucial, though she received no credit at the time. Biology had found the shape of heredity. The molecule of life had been drawn.