Final answer:
Linus Pauling misidentified the structure of DNA as a triple helix but inspired further research that led to the discovery of the accurate double helix structure by Watson, Crick, and Wilkins, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962.
Step-by-step explanation:
Linus Pauling, a two-time Nobel Prize-winner renowned for his work in chemistry and peace, was also deeply involved in exploring the structure of DNA during the 1950s. Although Pauling was a leading chemist and had earlier identified the alpha helix structure of proteins, his model of DNA was incorrect, as he proposed that it was a triple-stranded helix with phosphates on the inside and bases on the outside.
His contemporaries, James Watson and Francis Crick, were working at the University of Cambridge where they ultimately uncovered the correct structure of DNA as a double helix, with the assistance of Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction data. This discovery became fundamental to modern biology and genetics, with the correct model showing two strands of nucleotides twisted into a helix with sugar and phosphate groups on the outside and paired bases on the inside. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and another key researcher, Maurice Wilkins, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their revolutionary findings on the double-helix structure of DNA, one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the 20th-century.