experienced experimental diffraction researcher at King's at the time. Randall made this reassignment, even before Franklin started working at King's, because of the pioneering work by DNA researcher Maurice Wilkins, and he reassigned Raymond Gosling, the graduate student who had been working with Wilkins, to be her assistant. Even using crude equipment, Wilkins and Gosling had obtained an outstanding diffraction picture of DNA which sparked further interest in this molecule. They had been carrying out X-ray diffraction analysis of DNA in the unit since May 1950, but Randall had not informed them that he had asked Franklin to take over both the DNA diffraction work and guidance of Gosling's thesis. Randall's lack of communication about this reassignment significantly contributed to the well documented friction that developed between Wilkins and Franklin. Franklin, now working with Gosling, started to apply her expertise in X-ray diffraction techniques to the structure of DNA. She used a new fine-focus X-ray tube and microcamera ordered by Wilkins, but which she refined, adjusted and focused carefully. Drawing upon her physical chemistry background, she also skillfully manipulated the critical hydration of her specimens. When Wilkins inquired about this improved technique, she replied in terms which offended Wilkins as Franklin had "an air of cool superiority". Franklin presented their data at a lecture in November 1951, in King's College London. In her lecture notes, Franklin wrote the following: Franklin's habit of intensely looking people in the eye while being concise, impatient and direct unnerved many of her colleagues. In stark contrast, Wilkins was very shy, and slowly calculating in speech while he avoided looking anyone directly in the eye. In spite of the intense atmosphere, Franklin and Gosling discovered that there were two forms of DNA: at high humidity (when wet) the DNA fibre became long and thin; when it was dried it became short and fat. Franklin named these two forms "B" and "A" respectively. (The biological functions of A-DNA were only discovered 60 years later.) Because of the intense personality conflict developing between Franklin and Wilkins, Randall divided the work on DNA. Franklin chose the data rich "A" form while Wilkins selected the "B" form because, according to his self-written biography, Wilkins' preliminary pictures had hinted it might be helical. The X-ray diffraction pictures, including the landmark Photo 51 taken by Franklin's student Gosling at this time, have been called by John Desmond Bernal as "amongst the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken". By the end of 1951 it was generally accepted at King's that the B form of DNA was a helix, but after she had recorded an asymmetrical image in May 1952, Franklin became unconvinced that the A form of DNA was a helix. In July 1952, as a practical joke on Wilkins (who frequently expressed his view that both forms of DNA were helical), Franklin and Gosling produced a funeral notice regretting the 'death' of helical crystalline DNA (A-DNA). During 1952, they worked at applying the Patterson function to the X-ray pictures of DNA they had produced. This was a long and labour-intensive approach but would yield significant insight into the structure of the molecule. By January 1953, Franklin had reconciled her conflicting data, concluding that both DNA forms had two helices, and had started to write a series of three draft manuscripts, two of which included a double helical DNA backbone (see below). Her two A-DNA manuscripts reached Acta Crystallographica in Copenhagen on 6 March 1953, one day before Crick and Watson had completed their model on B-DNA. She must have mailed them while the Cambridge team was building their