20th century in science biologically relevant molecules, they were, till the end of the 20th century, more a collection of rules, observations, and recipes than rigorous ab initio quantitative methods. This heuristic approach triumphed in 1953 when James Watson and Francis Crick deduced the double helical structure of DNA by constructing models constrained by and informed by the knowledge of the chemistry of the constituent parts and the X-ray diffraction patterns obtained by Rosalind Franklin. This discovery lead to an explosion of research into the biochemistry of life. In the same year, the Miller–Urey experiment demonstrated that basic constituents of protein, simple amino acids,
DNA the same issue of "Nature". Of these, Franklin and Gosling's paper was the first publication of their own X-ray diffraction data and original analysis method that partly supported the Watson and Crick model; this issue also contained an article on DNA structure by Maurice Wilkins and two of his colleagues, whose analysis and "in vivo" B-DNA X-ray patterns also supported the presence "in vivo" of the double-helical DNA configurations as proposed by Crick and Watson for their double-helix molecular model of DNA in the prior two pages of "Nature". In 1962, after Franklin's death, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly received