How 4 Nerds Discovered The DNA Helix 60 Years Ago Today
Letter Francis Crick wrote to his son in 1953 Christie's via io9From the Popular Science archive, the story of how Watson, Crick, Wilkins, and Franklin worked out the structure of life. "DNA: It Calls the Signals of Life," by Wallace Cloud and excerpted below, originally appeared in the May 1963 issue of Popular Science magazine. Francis Crick and James Watson first described the double helix structure of DNA on April 25, 1953.--Ed Last December an American biologist and two English physicists received formal recognition, in the shape of a Nobel Prize, for a discovery made 10 years ago-a discovery that started a chain reaction in biology. They determined the structure of a molecule that provides answers to questions scientists have been asking for over a century: • How does a heart muscle "know" how to beat? • How does a brain cell "know" how to play its role in thinking and feeling? • How...