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 The controversy arose from Watson and Crick using some of Franklin's unpublished data—without her consent—in their construction of the double helix model of DNA.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
Fiber diffraction eliminates fiber tilt, unwarps the detector image, and corrects the scattering intensity. The correct equation for the determination of β has been presented by Norbert Stribeck. Fiber diffraction data led to several important advances in the development of structural biology, e.g., the original models of the α-helix and the Watson-Crick model of double-stranded DNA. The animation shows the geometry of fiber diffraction. It is based on the notions proposed by Polanyi. Reference direction is the primary beam (label: X-ray). If the fiber is tilted away from the perpendicular direction by an angle β, as well the information about its molecular