Structure of tobacco mosaic virus.

The first discovery of the geometry of a protein structure. Franklin, whose X-ray photographs of DNA were crucial to Watson and Crick's discovery of the molecule's double helix structure in 1953, began researching the molecular structure of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) after moving from King's College to Birkbeck College in mid-1953. Between 1953 and her death in 1958, Franklin and her team of researchers made significant advances in knowledge of the virus's molecular structure, beginning with the present paper announcing her discovery, based on her X-ray photographs, that the rod-shaped TMV units are all the same length and that they are made up of identical protein subunits. Preceding Perutz and Kendrew's mapping of the structures of myoglobin and hemoglobin by several years, this was the first discovery of the geometry of a protein structure.