who discovered the structure of dna

The structure of DNA was discovered in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick, who built the double-helix model. Their discovery was significantly aided by Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction images, especially "Photo 51," which provided crucial evidence of DNA's helical structure. Maurice Wilkins also contributed to this work, and all three men—Watson, Crick, and Wilkins—shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for the discovery. Rosalind Franklin's critical contributions were foundational to this breakthrough, though she was not included in the Nobel Prize due to her passing in 1958.