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 The controversy arose from Watson and Crick using some of Franklin's unpublished data—without her consent—in their construction of the double helix model of DNA.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
Timeline of United States discoveries chloride 1936 Elliptical galaxies 1936 Muons 1936 Vitamin E 1936 Sodium thiopental 1937 Niacin 1937 Electron capture 1938 Fluropolymers 1938 Animal echolocation 1938 Carme 1938 Lysithea 1940 Plutonium 1942 Cyanoacrylate 1943 Streptomycin 1944 Americium 1944 Curium 1946 Cloud seeding 1948 Warfarin 1948 Miranda 1948 Serotonin 1948 Tetracycline 1949 Nereid 1949 Berkelium 1950 Californium 1951 Barium stars 1951 Ananke 1952 Polio vaccine 1952 Einsteinium 1952 Rapid eye movement 1953 DNA structure In 1953, based on X-ray diffraction images and the information that the bases were paired, James D. Watson along with Francis Crick co-discovered what is now widely accepted as the