The discoverers of the structure of DNA. James Watson b. 1928 at left and Francis Crick 1916_2004, with their model of part of a DNA molecule in 1953. Crick & Watson met at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, in 1951. Their work on the structure of DNA was performed with a knowledge of Chargaff磗 ratios of the bases in DNA and some access to the X_ray crystallography of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King磗 College London. Combining all of this work led to the deduction that DNA exists as a double helix. Crick, Watson and Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, Franklin having died of cancer in 1958. Photographed in the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK, in May 1953.el