Gosling was re-assigned to Rosalind Franklin when she joined Wilkins' group in 1951. For the next two years, they worked closely together to improve the X-ray diffraction photography of DNA and get a sharper image. Gosling made the X-ray diffraction image of DNA known as "Photo 51". This work led directly to the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine being awarded to Francis Crick, James D. Watson and Maurice Wilkins. Gosling was the co-author with Franklin of one of the three DNA double helix papers published in "Nature" in April 1953.