Which two scientists proposed the double-helix model of DNA in a 1953 Nature paper?

James Watson and Francis Crick proposed the double-helix model of DNA in their 1953 Nature paper.

Their brief article, “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” appeared on 25 April 1953. It described two antiparallel strands wound around one another, with specific base pairing: adenine with thymine and guanine with cytosine. That pairing suggested how DNA could both store biological information and be copied.

Watson and Crick did not solve the problem in isolation. Their model drew on chemical rules from Erwin Chargaff and crucial X-ray diffraction evidence produced by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. Maurice Wilkins also worked on DNA diffraction at King’s College London. Franklin and Wilkins are therefore central to the story, but they were not the two authors of the Nature paper named in the question. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; Franklin had died in 1958.