Linus Pauling showed evidence for a helix and planar base stacking along the helix axis. Early in 1953 Watson and Crick proposed a correct structure for the DNA double helix. Pauling later cited several reasons to explain how he had been misled about the structure of DNA, among them misleading density data and the lack of high quality X-ray diffraction photographs. During the time Pauling was researching the problem, Rosalind Franklin in England was creating the world's best images. They were key to Watson's and Crick's success. Pauling did not see them before devising his mistaken DNA structure, although his assistant Robert
Non-helical models of DNA structure The SBS structure was hypothetical, and was not based primarily upon physical evidence. It was created to provide a theoretical solution to the angular momentum problem in DNA replication, which Rodley believed to be otherwise unsolvable. The SBS structure is a modification of the original Watson-Crick structure where, instead of one fully right-handed helical twist every 10 base pairs, there is only a "half"-twist of 5 base pairs’ length, followed immediately by a half-twist in the "opposite" direction (that is, a left-handed half-twist, also of 5 base pairs’ length). This alternating pattern of right- and left-handed half-twists is repeated throughout