Franklin and Gosling (1953)

Rosalind E Franklin and R G Gosling, "The structure of sodium thymonucleate fibres. I. The influence of water content," Acta Crystallographica, 6: 8-9 (1953), 673-7. Reprinted paper, unmarked save for "A" and "B" with arrows marked in pencil on the page of Plates facing p. 674.

R D B Fraser, "The structure of deoxyribose nucleic acid" (typescript, dated 17 March, 1953), proposing a three-stranded structure: "... in view of the letter by Pauling and Corey it seems worth describing a type of structure that we have considered, which, although it involves three intertwined helical polynucleotide chains, differs considerably from that formulated by them" (p. 1).

Fraser's reference is to the letter from Linus Pauling and Robert B Corey published in Nature (21 February, 1953, p. 346), proposing a three-stranded structure for DNA. Although Fraser's paper is cited as "in the press" in Watson and Crick's first paper (Nature, 25 April, 1953), and although Fraser's paper is cast with publication in Nature in mind, it was not published.

In addition, the file contains a letter (5 June, 1953, photocopy) from Crick to Franklin, returning "the two papers which you so kindly lent to Jim." The letter continues: "I am enclosing a few comments on the papers and some longer remarks on salt, on Riley and Oster's results, and on calculating structure factors. What a problem it is!"

The "comments" referred to in Crick's letter comprise "Notes on two papers by Franklin and Gosling" (2 sheets, photocopied typescript) and "Additional notes" (3 sheets, photocopied typescript). Both sets of comments have a number of underlinings to the copies made in red.