Happy birthday to Modern Genetics!

"On the morning of February 28, 1953, Cambridge biologist James Watson (1928-) was arranging and rearranging cardboard cutouts of DNA's constituent molecules when he happened upon a particularly interesting pattern. The discovery of this structure, later termed the "double helix," revealed the mechanism by which genetic information is transmitted in living things, and would usher in a revolution in the fields of evolutionary biology and genetics. 


Watson and his Cambridge collaborator Francis Crick (1916-2004) worked out the details of the structure, and the two shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Kings College biologist Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004), who provided Watson with x-ray photographs that proved pivotal in identifying the structure. Kings College biophysicist Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958), who had taken the photographs, died before the prize was awarded, and was therefore ineligible to share it."