Discovery of DNA

Film info

Film summary

The story of a race between two teams of scientists in the 1950s - Francis Crick and James Watson, Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins - desperate to be the first to unlock the molecular structure of DNA.

Key facts

• The discovery of DNA structure was pioneered by four scientists: Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick and James Watson.
• Wilkins and Franklin used X-ray images to reveal evidence of a helical structure in the DNA molecule.
• Crick and Watson instead built models of how they imagined DNA to look - like a cross or helix.
• In 1962 Crick, Watson and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovery of the DNA double helix.