 In January 1953, Watson was shown an X-ray photograph of B-DNA (called photograph 51), by Wilkins.Wilkins had been given photograph 51 by Rosalind Franklin's PhD student Raymond Gosling.Wilkins and Gosling had worked together in the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Biophysics Unit before director John Randall appointed Franklin to take over both DNA diffraction work and guidance of Gosling's thesis.