Franklin adjusted the humidity of the chamber using an ingenious apparatus that bubbled hydrogen through salt water. As she increased the wetness of DNA in the chamber, the fibers seemed to relax permanently. She had tamed them at last. Within weeks, she was taking pictures of DNA of a quality and clarity that had never before been seen. J. D. Bernal, the crystallographer, would later call them the “most beautiful X ray photographs of any substance ever taken.”
