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 The controversy arose from Watson and Crick using some of Franklin's unpublished data—without her consent—in their construction of the double helix model of DNA.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
Rosalind Franklin and DNA was a general consensus at the time that they were at the inside); and the other is that DNA exists in two forms, a crystalline (dry form) A-DNA and a hydrated (wet form) B-DNA. With her PhD student Raymond Gosling, she produced a series of X-ray images of DNA. The photograph (number 51, hence, popularised as Photo 51) of B-DNA taken in May 1952 was especially crucial. X-ray crystallography did not immediately show the precise helical structure. Franklin chose to work on A-DNA, while B-DNA was given to Maurice Wilkins. By the early 1953, Franklin was aware that both A