What scientists contributed to the discovery of DNA?

Answer 1

Oswald and Avery plus Hersey and Chase were early experimenters that actually showed that DNA, not protein, was the hereditary material. Maurice Wilkins and especially Rosalind Franklin with her X-ray crystallography laid the physical ground work, but it was James Watson and Francis Crick who elucidated the structure of DNA in 1952.

Answer 2

There were many scientists that helped discover DNA. James Crick and Francis Watson are generally credited with its discovery but there were other people who helped leading up to the discovery.


Maurice Wilkins also shared the Nobel Prize with Crick and Watson after he also elucidated the structure of DNA. Rosalind Franklin, who's X-Ray diffraction pictures of DNA helped the others to discover the structure, missed out on the Nobel prize as she died shortly before it was presented (and you cannot win a posthumous prize)


Below is a time-line of DNA discovery and the scientist that were involved in the discovery.


In 1869 Friedrich Miescher discovered a substance in the nucleus of cells (that he called Nuclein)

In 1919 Phoebus Levene identified the building blocks that make up the structure of DNA (i.e that it is made up of a phosphate group, base and sugar) but got the structure and arrangement incorrect

In 1928 Fredrick Griffith discovered that by changing the DNA of different bacteria he could change the properties of those bacteria and thus suggested that DNA carried genetic information.

In 1937 William Astbury conducted X-Ray diffraction on DNA and discovered that it was made up of a regular structure. He was unable to state what the structure was however.

In 1952 Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase performed an experiment where they labelled viruses that affected bacteria with radiation and proved that DNA is the genetic material

In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick suggested what is now accepted as the first correct double-helix model of DNA structure. Their double-helix, molecular model of DNA was then based on a single X-ray diffraction image taken by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling in May 1952, as well as the information that the DNA bases were paired, also obtained through private communications from Erwin Chargaff in the previous years.

Maurice Wilkins and two of his colleagues, whose analysis and in vivo DNA X-ray patterns also supported the presence of the double-helical DNA configurations as proposed by Crick and Watson for their double-helix molecular model of DNA.


In 1958 Har Gobind Khorana, Robert W. Holley and Marshall Warren Nirenberg deciphered the genetic code.


In 1962, after Franklin's death, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Unfortunately, Nobel rules of the time allowed only living recipients, but a vigorous debate continues on who should receive credit for the discovery

Answer 3

Francis H.C. Crick and James D. Watson are credited with the discovery of DNA. However they stole the idea from Rosalind Franklin

Answer 4

Johannes Friedrich Miescher was a Swiss physician and biologist. He was the first researcher to isolate and identify nucleic acids in 1869. (Wikipedia)

Answer 5

Rosalind Franklin took x-ray photographs of DNA, these picture helped James Watson Crick and Francis Crick discover the structure of DNA

Answer 6

There are three scientists who "found" DNA, Francis Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin.

Answer 7

Watson and Crick got the credit and the Nobel Prize, although Rosalind Franklin is thought to have contributed a lot to their success.

Answer 8

James Watson and Francis Crick worked out the structure of DNA in 1953

Answer 9

Francis Crick and James Watson :)