Non-helical models of DNA structure the top of this article, or there could be an equal number of right-handed and left-handed twists, as in the Rodley structure below. The abbreviation "TN", to be used to refer to any DNA structure whose strands are topologically non-linked, has been proposed. The double-helix model of DNA structure was first published in the journal "Nature" by James D. Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 with further details in 1954.) Their work was based upon the crucial X-ray diffraction image of DNA - labeled as "Photo 51" - from Rosalind Franklin in 1952, followed by her more highly clarified DNA
Francis Crick Crick was in the right place, in the right frame of mind, at the right time (1949), to join Max Perutz's project at the University of Cambridge, and he began to work on the X-ray crystallography of proteins. X-ray crystallography theoretically offered the opportunity to reveal the molecular structure of large molecules like proteins and DNA, but there were serious technical problems then preventing X-ray crystallography from being applicable to such large molecules. Crick taught himself the mathematical theory of X-ray crystallography. During the period of Crick's study of X-ray diffraction, researchers in the Cambridge lab were attempting to determine