This year is the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the DNA double helix by James Watson and Francis Crick, and to mark the occasion the London-based Science Photo Library has produced a poster showing the two scientists with their DNA model, which was made out of retort stands holding thin brass rods and balls.
But the photograph, which has become an icon of scientific discovery and now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London, came about almost by chance. It was taken by Anthony Barrington Brown, a young photographer living in Cambridge, in May 1953 to go with a freelancer's story written for Time magazine, but was never published.
Copies of the poster and further information are available through the Science Photo Gallery website: www.sciencephotogallery.co.uk