Final answer:
William Astbury worked on the secondary structure of proteins using X-ray crystallography before Rosalind Franklin's contributions to DNA's structural understanding. Astbury's methodologies laid the groundwork for X-ray diffraction techniques later applied to DNA by Franklin, which ultimately informed Watson and Crick's model of the double helix.
Step-by-step explanation:
Before Rosalind Franklin's pivotal work on DNA, William Astbury had significantly contributed to the field of structural biology. At King's College London, Astbury initially focused on the secondary structure of proteins, employing X-ray crystallography to understand their shapes and patterns, an approach that would later become critical to the study of DNA.
In the same laboratory where Astbury worked, Rosalind Franklin and her doctoral student Raymond Gosling made groundbreaking discoveries regarding DNA's structure. Their research revealed two forms of DNA: the long, thin 'B' form when wet and the short, wide 'A' form when dry.
Franklin's meticulous X-ray diffraction images, including the famous "Photo 51", were instrumental in establishing DNA's double helix structure - data that Watson and Crick later used for their own analysis and eventual discovery of DNA's double helical model.
While not directly involved with Watson and Crick's model construction, Franklin's contributions were substantial. She previously had researched the structure of coals, which aided the British war effort, before shifting her focus to biological systems.
Her work not only provided the underpinnings for the understanding of DNA structure but also extended to RNA and viruses. Unfortunately, her contributions to the DNA structure were not fully recognized during her lifetime, and she passed away in 1958 before the 1962 Nobel Prize was awarded to Watson, Crick, and Wilkins for the discovery of the DNA structure.