Science
James Dewey Watson
DNA structural-model coauthor
Also known as James Watson · J. D. Watson
Photograph · Image credit
Who they are
James Watson worked with Francis Crick on a structural model of DNA that joined chemical constraints with evidence from X-ray research. Their 1953 paper proposed complementary base pairing and pointed toward a copying mechanism. Experimental contributions by Franklin, Gosling, Wilkins and colleagues remain essential, separately credited parts of that publication sequence.
He appears in the timeline’s account of the collaborative evidence behind DNA’s double helix.
Selected contributions
Selected works
Academic paper · 1953
Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid
Watson and Crick propose two DNA chains with complementary base pairs and suggest an implication for copying. Their short paper acknowledges experimental and chemical evidence supplied by other researchers and calls for further testing.
Reading scope & citation
Reuses documented prior inspection: Full transcribed article read; header’s April 2 is the manuscript date, checked against Nature’s publication metadata. Minor transcription typos not reproduced. Reuses the input’s documented prior inspection: Full transcribed article read; header’s April 2 is the manuscript date, checked against Nature’s publication metadata. Minor transcription typos not reproduced. No fresh full-work reread in this directory pass.
In the timeline
Documented connections
Documented · co authored with
James Watson and Francis Crick co-authored the DNA structural-model paper.
This is authorship of one paper in the three-paper sequence; the experimental papers and acknowledged contributors retain their separate credit.
Read the relationship record →Biography sources & portrait credit
- Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid ↗Nature 171, 737–738; transcription hosted by California State University, Stanislaus
Portrait credit
Newspaper Enterprise Association. Public domain in the United States (Commons file-specific declaration). Via Wikimedia Commons.
Photograph. Cropped to 4:5, resized to 320 × 400 and converted to WebP.
Image source & identification ↗ · Public domain in the United States (Commons file-specific declaration) ↗
