Final answer:
Rosalind Franklin's X-ray crystallography work was crucial for Watson and Crick to confirm the helical structure and dimensions of DNA, leading to their development of the double helix model.
Step-by-step explanation:
The discoveries by Rosalind Franklin played a pivotal role in helping James Watson and Francis Crick develop their accurate model of DNA’s double helix structure. Franklin, using X-ray crystallography, captured diffraction images that showed the helical nature of DNA. These images, especially the famous Photo 51, depicted the structure of DNA as a helix, which was a crucial piece of evidence. Watson and Crick utilized her data to confirm the double helix structure and to understand the specific dimensions and shape of the DNA molecule.
Franklin's X-ray diffraction evidence complemented other key pieces of information, such as Chargaff's rules, which showed that certain nucleotides in DNA always appear in equal amounts, suggesting pairing.
The helical nature revealed by Franklin's work, aligned with Chargaff's findings, allowed Watson and Crick to deduce the pairing of the nucleotides and the antiparallel nature of the two DNA strands.
Although Franklin's contribution was critical, she unfortunately passed away before the Nobel Prize was awarded in 1962 to Watson, Crick, and Wilkins for the discovery of DNA's structure. Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously, so Franklin did not receive the same recognition.