If you are interested in the story around the elucidation of the structure of the DNA molecule you might want to read "The Eighth Day of Creation" by Horace Freedland Judson. Watson and Crick were working at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Interestingly, they made their DNA discoveries in 1953 by intuition and deduction rather than experimentation. Maurice Wilkins was at Kings College in London. He was a physicist who had switched to investigation of biological structures after WWII. (Watson & Crick asked Maurice Wilkins if it was alright with him if they pursued their thoughts and tried to discern the DNA structure which he was working on too.) Rosalind Franklin was a crystallographer and was actually only a few steps away from correctly discerning the DNA structure but did not focus on this as this was not her goal. The discovery was made after countless hours of discussion and argument, agreements and disagreements, incorrect and correct assumptions, cardboard cutouts and wire and sheet metal models, by both Watson and Crick. The sum total of all of these allowed an intuitive deduction and a correct interpretation of the structure of the DNA model in 1953. The Nobel Prize awarded in 1962 went to the three people most closely involved - Crick, Watson & Wilkins. Rosalind Franklin had died and although her work was significant - she was not actively working on DNA. Back to Challenge Q and A © Explorit Science Center, 1996: