The double-helix structure of DNA was published in 1953. James Watson and Francis Crick presented their model in the short paper “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” published in Nature on 25 April 1953.
Their model proposed two antiparallel DNA strands wound around one another, with complementary bases joined inside the helix. Adenine pairs with thymine, while guanine pairs with cytosine. This pairing explained how genetic information could be copied when the strands separated.
Watson and Crick’s achievement relied on evidence from several researchers, especially X-ray diffraction work by Rosalind Franklin, Raymond Gosling, and Maurice Wilkins. Franklin and Gosling’s famous Photo 51 provided important evidence for DNA’s helical structure, although the historical credit and use of their data remain subjects of debate.
A common mix-up is 1962, the year Watson, Crick, and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The structure itself was published nine years earlier, in 1953.