James Watson diffraction data collected by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. The controversy arose from Watson and Crick using some of Franklin's unpublished data—without her consent—in their construction of the double helix model of DNA. Franklin's experimental results provided estimates of the water content of DNA crystals and these results were consistent with the two sugar-phosphate backbones being on the outside of the molecule. Franklin personally told Crick and Watson that the backbones had to be on the outside, which was a crucial piece of information; before then, Linus Pauling and Watson and Crick had generated erroneous models with the chains inside
Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" was the first article published to describe the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, using X-ray diffraction and the mathematics of a helix transform. It was published by Francis Crick and James D. Watson in the scientific journal "Nature" on pages 737–738 of its 171st volume (dated 25 April 1953). This article is often termed a "pearl" of science because it is brief and contains the answer to a fundamental mystery about living organisms. This mystery