History of molecular biology Crick and Watson built physical models using metal rods and balls, in which they incorporated the known chemical structures of the nucleotides, as well as the known position of the linkages joining one nucleotide to the next along the polymer. At King's College Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin examined X-ray diffraction patterns of DNA fibers. Of the three groups, only the London group was able to produce good quality diffraction patterns and thus produce sufficient quantitative data about the structure. In 1948 Pauling discovered that many proteins included helical (see alpha helix) shapes. Pauling had deduced this structure from X-ray
Non-helical models of DNA structure image with Raymond Gosling, Maurice Wilkins, Alexander Stokes, and Herbert Wilson, as well as base-pairing chemical and biochemical information by Erwin Chargaff. Wilkins and colleagues also reported on X-ray patterns of the state of "in vivo" B-DNA in partially oriented salmon sperm heads. Crick, Wilkins, and Watson each received one-third of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their contributions to this discovery. Franklin, whose breakthrough X-ray diffraction data was used to formulate the DNA structure, died in 1958, and thus was ineligible to be nominated for a Nobel Prize. In 1963, John Cairns published autoradiographs of the