What was the title of Watson and Crick's landmark 1953 paper?

Watson and Crick's landmark 1953 paper was titled “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.”

Published in Nature on 25 April 1953, the two-page paper presented their proposed model for DNA's structure. The title is sometimes shortened in conversation to “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids,” but the full title includes the subtitle identifying deoxyribose nucleic acid—what is now routinely called DNA.

The paper explained the famous double helix and emphasized complementary base pairing. Watson and Crick noted that the specific pairing of the bases suggested a mechanism by which genetic material could be copied, an insight that connected molecular structure to heredity.

The article was part of a three-paper sequence in the same issue of Nature. Maurice Wilkins, Alec Stokes, and Herbert Wilson published a paper alongside it, while Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling contributed another. “The Double Helix” is not the paper's title; it is the title of Watson's later 1968 autobiographical book about the discovery.