<P> Sayre's early analysis was often ignored because of perceived feminist overtones in her book . Watson and Crick did not cite the X-ray diffraction work of Wilkins and Franklin in their original paper, though they admit having "been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr. M.H.F. Wilkins, Dr. R.E. Franklin and their co-workers at King's College, London". In fact, Watson and Crick cited no experimental data at all in support of their model . Franklin and Gosling's publication of the DNA X-ray image, in the same issue of Nature, served as the principal evidence: </P> <P> Thus our general ideas are not inconsistent with the model proposed by Watson and Crick in the preceding communication . </P> <P> Franklin was never nominated for a Nobel Prize . Her work was a crucial part in the discovery of DNA's structure, which along with subsequent related work led to Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins being awarded a Nobel Prize in 1962 . She had died in 1958, and during her lifetime the DNA structure was not considered as fully proven . It took Wilkins and his colleagues about seven years to collect enough data to prove and refine the proposed DNA structure . Moreover, its biological significance, as proposed by Watson and Crick, was not established . General acceptance for the DNA double helix and its function did not start until late in the 1950s, leading to Nobel nominations in 1960, 1961, and 1962 for Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and in 1962 for Nobel Prize in Chemistry . The first breakthrough was from Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl in 1958, who experimentally showed the DNA replication of a bacterium Escherichia coli . Now known as Meselson--Stahl experiment, DNA was found to replicate into two double - stranded helices, with each helix having one of the original DNA strands . This DNA replication was firmly established by 1961 after further demonstration in other species, and of the stepwise chemical reaction . According to the 1961 Crick--Monod letter, this experimental proof, along with Wilkins having initiated the DNA diffraction work, were the reasons why Crick felt that Wilkins should be included in the DNA Nobel Prize . </P> <P> In 1962 the Nobel Prize was subsequently awarded to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins . Nobel rules prohibit posthumous nominations or splitting of Prizes more than three ways . The award was for their body of work on nucleic acids and not exclusively for the discovery of the structure of DNA . By the time of the award Wilkins had been working on the structure of DNA for more than 10 years, and had done much to confirm the Watson--Crick model . Crick had been working on the genetic code at Cambridge and Watson had worked on RNA for some years . Watson has suggested that ideally Wilkins and Franklin would have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry . </P>

Who won the nobel peace prize for dna structure