James Watson began his road to triumph in discovering DNA in the fall of 1951 when he visited the Cavendish laboratory of Cambridge University. He went to Cambridge to join a small group of physicist and chemist who were working on the three dimensional structures of proteins. His colleges were Francis crick, Max Perutz, and sir Lawrence Bragg. Crick was a very well known man sometimes categorized with Rutherford and Bohr. Crick had a very quick and penetrating mind, his colleges often sought after his advise. Crick was working with Perutz who was an Australian born chemist. He had been working on an X-ray diffraction and had been collecting it from hemoglobin crystals for over ten years. Helping Perutz was Sir Lawrence Bragg; Bragg was the director of Cavendish. Bragg was a noble prizewinner and one of the founders of crystallography. Before Watson's arrival to Cambridge Crick had only thought about DNA. At this time there was some evidence that DNA would unravel the true secret of life, however, it was still believed that proteins were the real mystery behind the true secret of life. There were still many scientists who believed that genes were protein molecules, and that DNA was too inconclusive. .
At this time Francis was not prepared to jump into the world of DNA. Its importants did not seem efficient enough to abandon the world of proteins. Over time Crick and Watson began paying more attention to DNA and became more interested. Finally Crick devoted more of his time to DNA and slowly forgot about proteins. Once a door opened for Watson and Crick they began looking into it. After much time in a laboratory Watson and Crick found that proteins were no longer what they thought they could be and that DNA was indeed the basis of life. It was still very skeptical but they believed their research was going to prove the structure of DNA. .
As their research went on Francis saw that it was hopeless and not going anywhere so he went back to proteins.