DNA Day DNA Day National DNA Day is a holiday celebrated on April 25. It commemorates the day in 1953 when James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin and colleagues published papers in the journal Nature on the structure of DNA. Furthermore, on that day in 2003 it was declared that the Human Genome Project was very close to complete, and "the remaining tiny gaps [we]re considered too costly to fill." In the United States, DNA Day was first celebrated on April 25, 2003 by proclamation of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. However, they only declared a one-time
Francis Crick diffraction images collected by Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of DNA. While Franklin's experimental work proved important to Crick and Watson's development of a correct model, she herself could not realize it at the time. When she left King's College, Director Sir John Randall insisted that all DNA work belonged exclusively to King's and ordered Franklin to not even think about it. Franklin subsequently did superb work in J. D. Bernal's Lab at Birkbeck College with the tobacco mosaic virus extending ideas on helical construction. Crick was often described as very talkative, with Watson – in