DNA diffraction image (labeled as "Photo 51") taken by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling in May 1952, and the information that the DNA bases are paired. On 28 February 1953 Crick interrupted patrons' lunchtime at The Eagle pub in Cambridge to announce that he and Watson had "discovered the secret of life". Months earlier, in February 1953, Linus Pauling and Robert Corey proposed a model for nucleic acids containing three intertwined chains, with the phosphates near the axis, and the bases on the outside. Experimental evidence supporting the Watson and Crick model was published in a series of five articles in
Francis Crick some of which were performed by Crick. The details of the code came mostly from work by Marshall Nirenberg and others who synthesized synthetic RNA molecules and used them as templates for "in vitro" protein synthesis. Nirenberg first announced his results to a small audience in Moscow at a 1961 conference. Crick's reaction was to invite Nirenberg to deliver his talk to a larger audience. An enduring controversy has been generated by Watson and Crick's use of DNA X-ray diffraction data collected by Franklin and Wilkins. The controversy arose from the fact that some of Franklin's unpublished data were used