On this day in 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick of Cambridge University announced that they'd determined the structure of DNA, opening a whole new world of scientific discovery. Since then, our knowledge of DNA's structure has allowed us to tinker with it in ways that have improved pretty much everyone's lives somehow, whether through new medical treatments, the modification of foods, the identification of human remains, or any of the other many, many applications people have found for it.
The discovery of DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid, had come many decades earlier in 1869, but it took until the 1940s to show that it was the mechanism for passing down genes. By the 1950s, the race was on; Crick and Watson were one of many teams trying to crack the structure of DNA.
In brief, they discovered that DNA separates itself from the helix shape to separate strands, which then replicate into new helixes (helices? Who knows.). The findings were officially published in Nature magazine in April and validated quickly by several scientists, including Maurice H.F. Wilkins.
Unfortunately, there's a tragic element to the story. One person whose work was critical to the discovery went generally unrecognized. DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin had taken X-ray photographs that proved DNA molecules were in the shape of a helix. She died four years before the award was given to Crick and Watson, never knowing that her work was foundational to their discovery. There were others involved who didn't get credit for their contributions but Franklin is the most prominent.
You can learn more about the discovery of DNA in the Journal of Medicine and Life.
